Maarselok, Sea-Serpent's Coil, Masters DW, Vate Destro, and whatever proc set or defensive set. There you go, my SUPER UNIQUE OP GODLIKE SECRET NO PVP EXPERTS WANT YOU TO KNOW TYPE PVP BUILD!

But yeah, it is either these sets or classic ole tanks. Tanks are even rarer though.

I'd say its partially elemental susceptibility receiving a significant buff a while back. Being the incredible force amplifier that it is, Its actually somewhat stronger than vateshran destro itself IMO, which in turn often does more than twice the DPS than the master's dual wield DOT bonus. I'd also say its significantly better than SnB's puncture skill; its free, can be applied from a distance, its status effects refresh, has a longer duration, and of course, can activate vateshran destro, etc. There's also the fact that a free hemorrhage was also added to rending slashes sometime ago too (probably because of PvE).

There's also a lack of "instant" single target melee spammable options available. There's a reason why you don't often see NB's and DK's spamming rending slashes on you as much compared to melee sorcs, wardens, necromancers and arcanists.

Dragon's appetite (and maarselok) synergizes well with status effect spam, so elemental susceptabilty with vateshran destro provides up to six effects, while rending slashes spam provides three, with potentially another two on top if you use different enchants on it.

Undeath is also an issue. Max stamina and magicka stats aren't as good as they used to be as well, so why not invest into health, which pairs well with undeath. Combine that with back-barring an ice staff (often with the overloaded elemental susceptibility) with the instant burst heals which had also been buffed (coagulating blood, polar wind, healthy offering, etc) or other strong defensive abilities like arcanist shields or templar's rune, means if you want to secure kills on them, building for pressure is typically the superior solution, because burst isn't as effective as it used to be; unless you're a NB.

With that said, I don't think its overwhelmingly as meta as some people believe (and not as common as vamp is), especially when you compare it to previous DOT pressure metas. But I do think limiting the status effects from elemental susceptibility to whatever the respective element it comes from; so ice staves would only activate minor brittle, would help. Toning down undeath which currently is similar to having a 5pc pariah bonus would help make burst combos more relevant too. The near irrelevance of health recovery in PvP has also served as another indirect buff for pressure based damage while further providing even more of an incentive to use undeath. Ideally I'd like for them to make health recovery not a dead stat again, but they should also tone down the potential extreme high ends that could be achieved in the past. This would also make not going vamp a more viable option.

Now, I also don't believe in shoehorning melee players into having to use cast time or channeled skills like dizzy swing and rapid strikes, considering how much the game has changed over time, is a good idea either. So actually providing more viable single target spammable options for melee players so they don't feel like they have to use mDW to have one, would be a good start as well. Simply nerfing mDW would likely indirectly buff DK and especially NB, because whip and concealed weapon are great spammables, and it would remove options from melee sorcs, wardens, necromancers, and arcanists.

Also, master's dual wield itself hasn't changed since update 26, so what we're seeing here is that there's other reasons why other traditional stamina spammables have been becoming outclassed over time, mostly due to how the game has evolved over the past few years. I will also say that mDW's DOT bonus actually has a smaller impact than people realize; hemorrhage damage ticks from rending slashes almost do the same amount of damage as the mDW DOT bonus itself, and the free hemorrhage can activate every second if you're spamming rending slashes, so perhaps adjusting the hemorrhage frequency might be better.

Hybridization happened, it removed what little diversity the game had before. That and a bunch of small poor balancing decisions that added up like the charged trait buff, massive elemental susceptibility buff or the consolidation of both resolve/ward buffs and fracture/breach debuffs that led to some skills becoming outright better than others (puncture became basically extinct in pvp, replaced by ele sus which caused vateshran ice staff usage surge as it's "free" additional pressure for most builds).

Each class had 2-3 cookie-cutter builds, one stam one mag at least, but you could deviate from them and still perform reasonably well. And they at least played differently, the classic 2h/bow roly-poly stamblade played nothing like the old ranged magblade that used to survive with HoTs and dampen magic, or the magblade caluurion ganker, or the proxy det bomber etc...
Now each class has one build, and a lot is very similar between them. Only classes that already had well rounded kits like NB and DK got to keep a bit of originality.

*dk n nb still get to have class skills that do damage

Udrath wrote: »

No pvp major changes for like 2 years.

Recap: Nightblades get huge buffs and started doing high damage so everyone had to build tanky. Then people realised you can be tanky and do damage and we’re stuck.

Yep, that pretty much sums it.

Brakkish wrote: »

Udrath wrote: »

No pvp major changes for like 2 years.

Recap: Nightblades get huge buffs and started doing high damage so everyone had to build tanky. Then people realised you can be tanky and do damage and we’re stuck.

Yep, that pretty much sums it.

And you forgot the most important : as we all build tanky, nightblades arent doing damages anymore. Except on newbie.

I was against hybridization for this exact reason. ZOS deleted 6 classes in one update and now there might as well be one morph for every skill. Why would I make my character worse by deviating from the best morphs? Master DW and Vat Ice staff are problems but if you had to build Stam or Mag at least you had to run one or the other, hybridization was done with absolutely zero though behind it and now PvP is on life support.

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

I was against hybridization for this exact reason. ZOS deleted 6 classes in one update and now there might as well be one morph for every skill. Why would I make my character worse by deviating from the best morphs? Master DW and Vat Ice staff are problems but if you had to build Stam or Mag at least you had to run one or the other, hybridization was done with absolutely zero though behind it and now PvP is on life support.

Even before hybridization, there always had been best morphs. I don't see why this is brought up against hybridization. When a morph was terrible, people still never ran that particular morph and asked for buffs of the weak morph and nerfs to the viable morph.

OBJnoob wrote: »

I can see where hybridization was a little limiting on variety. I don't think it's a very hard fix though-- to just make morphs comparable to one another.

Another thing that has bothered me over the years has been the players' desire to have every comparable class skill be better than it's corresponding weapon skill. I think this is also harmful, ESPECIALLY when coupled with the complaint being discussed here.

I believe that class skills should not be stronger than weapon skills. Class skills already have the advantage that you can use them with any weapon. Each weapon should have its own identity as well as each class has its own identity, and weapon skills should not be weaker than class skills, in fact, and vice versa.
World, Guild, Alliance skills should improve the character's weaknesses but should not be better than similar class/weapon skills, and they should not be no brain choice for any situation, like Vigor.

Hybridization killed it. Everyone can run the absolute strongest sets, weapon combos, and skill choices on any class with no drawbacks now.

Hybridization effectively halved the number of classes in the game.

React wrote: »

Hybridization killed it. Everyone can run the absolute strongest sets, weapon combos, and skill choices on any class with no drawbacks now.

Hybridization effectively halved the number of classes in the game.

As a bonus your class choice is only going to give you a different color burst damage and heals, all hail the magical spreadsheet balance!