Why remove Haste in 1.6?

Nacario · January 2015

Im trying to understand why ZOS removed the nightblade Haste skill in 1.6. Currently it is a great quality of life when it comes to light/heavy attack weaving inbetween hard skills/casts, paired with stamina regen. As a bow user the flow of battle is more fluent with the buff up than without, and there are procs that benefits from rapid auto attacks such as evil hunter.

Why remove something that was unique, something no other class had = attack speed and good stamina recovery. Was it overpowered? Im also a bit put down due to the replacement skill that will grant us a slight damage boost with the ability to use a summoned bow, which very well may scale off magica as most class skills do (even after 1.6).

Lynx7386 · January 2015

Because they cant get it to work properly. Haste effects (anything increasing attack speed, not just the haste spell) have been completely and utterly worthless since launch because of conflicts between actual attack speed and animation speeds. Haste has never worked properly for bows, has been intermittently useless for all other weapon types, and has no impact on anything other than light and heavy attacks, making it far less useful to a player than something which will also boost ability damage.

The new version of haste will no longer increase attack speed, it will increase weapon damage, which means it will boost both your light/heavy attacks as well as any weapon attacks or weapon damage based abilities you use. We'll still have one morph for the 40% extra stamina regeneration, and now the ability will give you an optional high damage ranged attack after a few swings with your normal weapon, which should be pretty useful.

Brasseurfb16_ESO · January 2015

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because they cant get it to work properly. Haste effects (anything increasing attack speed, not just the haste spell) have been completely and utterly worthless since launch because of conflicts between actual attack speed and animation speeds. Haste has never worked properly for bows, has been intermittently useless for all other weapon types, and has no impact on anything other than light and heavy attacks, making it far less useful to a player than something which will also boost ability damage.

Haste has been working properly lately.

I'm using haste (Incapacitate) on my Nightblade bow wielder and it works fine. I get the bonus damage on heavy attacks and I definitly see a speed increase when I wave light attacks with Venomous Arrow and Acid Volley or when I string a heavy attack.

Haste has a lot of impact on your DpS since you can break instant cast abilities animation with your light attacks and use the GCD of your hasted light attacks instead of your abilities GCD thus increasing the speed at which you can wave between light attacks and abilities.

DeLindsay · January 2015

From the way they made it sound, the new ability (bound bow or w/e) will actually increase NB dps even more than Haste does now (which is a small increase). Haste was always looked at as a utility ability and was nice for certain builds and junk for others (like Magicka builds). We should wait and see what the new ability is like before worrying that Haste is being removed.

Draehl · January 2015

Lynx7386 wrote: »

The new version of haste will no longer increase attack speed, it will increase weapon damage, which means it will boost both your light/heavy attacks as well as any weapon attacks or weapon damage based abilities you use. We'll still have one morph for the 40% extra stamina regeneration, and now the ability will give you an optional high damage ranged attack after a few swings with your normal weapon, which should be pretty useful.

It's actually a raw +damage% boost similar to combat prayer. I'm actually rather happy about this as it allows caster NB to have a damage boost on their main damage bar and not have to run Resto Staff =D

Haste (Nightblade) – this was a cool concept, but because of light attack weaving this ability was never really useful or powerful. We replaced this ability with “Grim Focus” which is a duration buff which grants the “Minor Damage Done” buff for around 20 seconds. It tracks how many times you have attacked your target. Once you have done 8 attacks, it swaps to a new attack that allows you to summon a spectral bow which shoots the enemy for a high amount of damage. This is really cool because it’s a highly interactive ability.

DeLindsay · January 2015

Draehl wrote: »

It's actually a raw +damage% boost similar to combat prayer. I'm actually rather happy about this as it allows caster NB to have a damage boost on their main damage bar and not have to run Resto Staff =D

You might want to look into the Resto Staff tree, that passive was gone ages ago, in patch 1.4. Magicka NB's use Destro Staves now.

Lynx7386 · January 2015

DeLindsay wrote: »

Draehl wrote: »

It's actually a raw +damage% boost similar to combat prayer. I'm actually rather happy about this as it allows caster NB to have a damage boost on their main damage bar and not have to run Resto Staff =D

You might want to look into the Resto Staff tree, that passive was gone ages ago, in patch 1.4. Magicka NB's use Destro Staves now.

He's not talking about the passive, he's talking about combat prayer, which provides a damage boost to everyone it heals.

Darkonflare15 · January 2015

DeLindsay wrote: »

Draehl wrote: »

It's actually a raw +damage% boost similar to combat prayer. I'm actually rather happy about this as it allows caster NB to have a damage boost on their main damage bar and not have to run Resto Staff =D

You might want to look into the Resto Staff tree, that passive was gone ages ago, in patch 1.4. Magicka NB's use Destro Staves now.

@DeLindsay He was talking about combat prayer which is a resto staff move that is a burst heal and it gives you an attack boost. Not cycle of life which was the passive that was change.

DeLindsay · January 2015

Lynx7386 wrote: »

He's not talking about the passive, he's talking about combat prayer, which provides a damage boost to everyone it heals.

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

@DeLindsay He was talking about combat prayer which is a resto staff move that is a burst heal and it gives you an attack boost. Not cycle of life which was the passive that was change.

Which probably 95% of Healers use and try to keep up, I know I do when I'm Healing.

Lynnessa · January 2015

Draehl wrote: »

It's actually a raw +damage% boost similar to combat prayer. I'm actually rather happy about this as it allows caster NB to have a damage boost on their main damage bar and not have to run Resto Staff =D

Yeah, it really sounds like I might be able to use another weapon in my main bar. I run resto right now, for the passive magicka restore (Haste helps with this), for the armor/spell resist, and for the damage increase.

I like to stack the armor/spellres from Combat Prayer with what I get from using Dark Cloak (gives a ton of armor/spellres when exiting stealth). But it sounds like these will no longer stack. And if the new NB ability increases damage enough, I won't need Combat Prayer at all.

I only slot Haste on my second bar, and only during group play when I need a bit more dps. It sounds like with this change, I might be able to replace Combat Prayer with the new ability, allowing me to ditch resto staff AND freeing up a slot on my other bar.

I approve!

Sharee · January 2015

From what i understand:

Haste does not actually make your attacks faster. As in, when you swing a sword, the swing animation is not sped up when you are hasted.

Instead, haste shortens the delay the game puts in-between two basic attacks. So without haste you do swing---swing---swing, with haste you do swing-swing-swing.

The problem is that this delay between basic attacks only delays the next basic attacks. It does not delay the execution of another ability. That means when you put an ability between two basic attacks, the delay that would be normally between them (and shortened by haste) is instead ignored, and replaced by the ability.

With ability in-between, your attack sequence will be swing-ability-swing-ability-swing, and that regardless of whether you are hasted or not. The delay that would normally be there between swings(and shortened by haste) is instead cancelled and replaced by the ability animation.

This is otherwise also known as 'animation cancelling'.

DeLindsay · January 2015

What Haste does specifically is reduce the animation of attacks from 1.3 seconds to 1.0 seconds. It's a very minor DPS increase due to latency issues but does seem to smooth out the often times clunky combat system in ESO. Don't get me wrong I love ESO combat but it can be odd the way it reacts when you are trying to weapon swap or use an ability, often times it just has a spazz attack and your character does nothing.

Brasseurfb16_ESO · January 2015

Draehl wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

The new version of haste will no longer increase attack speed, it will increase weapon damage, which means it will boost both your light/heavy attacks as well as any weapon attacks or weapon damage based abilities you use. We'll still have one morph for the 40% extra stamina regeneration, and now the ability will give you an optional high damage ranged attack after a few swings with your normal weapon, which should be pretty useful.

It's actually a raw +damage% boost similar to combat prayer. I'm actually rather happy about this as it allows caster NB to have a damage boost on their main damage bar and not have to run Resto Staff =D

If it works like you describe, I can already see future posts asking for NBs to be nerfed in PvP. We are going to have yet another way to buff our sneak attack damage.

Well my Khajiit won't complain if it works even better than haste, but I find the situation a bit ironic since the devs are trying to balance PvP by nerfing stealth damage in general.

Darkonflare15 · January 2015

I hope the spetral bow looks cool because a dual wielder would look awesome with a spectral bow. Get in close and multiple hits in then roll dodge and use a spectral bow doing a lot damage. That would be awesome.

Celless · January 2015

I suspect the item traits may be getting changed in this patch too. I see something for Charged, but uncertain about Weighted.

Maybe Weighted could be something like reduced magicka / stamina cost of weapon abilities if it's going away too.

And while Grim Focus will find its way into some of our play styles, I liked the look of a swift flurry of attacks as well.

RIP Weighted, Haste, and Torug's Pact glitch.

morvegil · January 2015

Haste
This ability has been removed, and replaced by the new ability Grim Focus.
Grim Focus
This ability has replaced Haste in the Assassination tree. Any experience gained in Haste will now apply to Grim Focus.
When Grim Focus is activated, all weapon attacks will do additional damage for 20 seconds. Using light attacks or heavy attacks while the effect is active will grant a charge. When you gain eight charges, Grim Focus changes to Assassin’s Will.
Assassin’s Will: This ability allows you to fire a spectral projectile at your target, dealing magic damage.

Spiritreaver_ESO · January 2015

Nacario wrote: »

Im trying to understand why ZOS removed the nightblade Haste skill in 1.6. Currently it is a great quality of life when it comes to light/heavy attack weaving inbetween hard skills/casts, paired with stamina regen. As a bow user the flow of battle is more fluent with the buff up than without, and there are procs that benefits from rapid auto attacks such as evil hunter.

Why remove something that was unique, something no other class had = attack speed and good stamina recovery. Was it overpowered? Im also a bit put down due to the replacement skill that will grant us a slight damage boost with the ability to use a summoned bow, which very well may scale off magica as most class skills do (even after 1.6).

Your question reminds me of an ongoing debate i had with a linkshell-mate in FFXI. In that game Haste was/is king-it effects every aspect of the player character(cooldowns, atk speed, you name it). Personally i hated the way Haste was pretty much THE stat you had to stack no matter what job you were.

I think i'm going to like ZoS's solution to NB's wonky ability is a flat increase in raw dps. My only concern is that ZoS might see the change as too good and adjust it down later on.