Relentless Focus

xAlucardx92 · July 8

So, before I start cursing loudly, I'd better ask.

Do I understand correctly that with the change, to 4 stacks to activate the skill, and you can now fire it 3 times in a row?

CameraBeardThePirate · July 8

Yep.

9 stacks - Light attack bow -> 6 stacks -> Light attack bow -> 3 stacks -> light attack bow -> 0 stacks.

Kartalin · July 8

Finally Nightblade Assassination gets a buff /s

robpr · July 8

At the cost of no longer having passive wd/sd on stacks.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 8

robpr wrote: »

At the cost of no longer having passive wd/sd on stacks.

True, that will hurt damage somewhat, but you're also gaining a slot or a buff on your scribe skill since they added Proph/Sav on the skill. So sure, you might be losing some weapon and spell damage, but you could be gaining that damage back just as easily from slotting Breach if you didn't have it before, or adding in a damage Contingency to line up more burst, or adding in Major Defile or Cowardice on your stun for more pressure in PvP.

It's undoubtedly a PvE nerf, but it's a bit more nuanced in PvP as gaining a skill slot goes a whole lot further in PvP. Plus being able to (sometimes) fire 3 back-to-back bows is huge in PvP. Even if you don't land all of them, the threat of having your spec bow up 20% more often is nuts.

Mayrael · July 8

The worst decision is to add major savagery AND prophecy to this skill... ZOS you had one job, nerf assassination skill line and you managed to buff it somehow once again...

MashmalloMan · July 8

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 8

MashmalloMan wrote: »

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

Even if the stack cap is reduced to 8, being able to Relentless -> ability -> Relentless-> ability -> Relentless is still crazy.

MashmalloMan · July 8

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

Even if the stack cap is reduced to 8, being able to Relentless -> ability -> Relentless-> ability -> Relentless is still crazy.

Totally, but Merc still deals 14% more. From that point of view it's a fair morph choice now where as before 1 was for passive ws damage, the other for actual burst. I understand why they did it from that perspective at least.

The real problem is these skills deal ultimate level burst damage which was previously countered by knowing the player had only 1 in the chamber you could dodge giving you a window to retaliate, now.. we know the story. Notice how not a soul has ever complained about Bound Armaments despite also using 4 stacks and being doubled to 8? It's rocket science apparently to ZOS who just last patch tried to nerf BA by a further 10%.

Nevermind the fact that they have an easy solution they learned years ago through PvP about burst being too high in the form of converting burst into low duration dot that keeps PvE DPS the same while balancing PvP.

PTS is up though, I'll be hella surprised if it stacks to 10 still lol.

Mayrael · July 8

ZOS, as usual, never backs down. They made a huge mistake by increasing the stack amount, and now they’ll wreck everything because they won’t undo the changes. Stacks should return to 5, and the passive bonus needs to be nerfed to about 125 spell and weapon damage at 5 stacks (25 per stack) to match a 1-piece set bonus—or just scrapped entirely since it’s paired with a heal. Otherwise, we’re headed for complete chaos.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 8

MashmalloMan wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

Even if the stack cap is reduced to 8, being able to Relentless -> ability -> Relentless-> ability -> Relentless is still crazy.

Totally, but Merc still deals 14% more. From that point of view it's a fair morph choice now where as before 1 was for passive ws damage, the other for actual burst. I understand why they did it from that perspective at least.

The real problem is these skills deal ultimate level burst damage which was previously countered by knowing the player had only 1 in the chamber you could dodge giving you a window to retaliate, now.. we know the story. Notice how not a soul has ever complained about Bound Armaments despite also using 4 stacks and being doubled to 8? It's rocker science to ZOS who just last patch tried to nerf BA by a further 10%.

PTS is up though, I'll be hella surprised if it stacks to 10 still lol.

Yah, the morphs are a bit more equal. One is 20% more often (against generally lower physical resistance), one hits ~13% harder.

Cominfordatoothbrush · July 8

Mayrael wrote: »

The worst decision is to add major savagery AND prophecy to this skill... ZOS you had one job, nerf assassination skill line and you managed to buff it somehow once again...

It is a nerf, at least for PvE. Unless the 4 stack bow procs going faster end up outweighing 400wd

Rkindaleft · July 8

Cominfordatoothbrush wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

The worst decision is to add major savagery AND prophecy to this skill... ZOS you had one job, nerf assassination skill line and you managed to buff it somehow once again...

It is a nerf, at least for PvE. Unless the 4 stack bow procs going faster end up outweighing 400wd

It’s a nerf targeted at those PvE beam builds because 95% of people just slotted it on the backbar for free 400 W/SD and never casted it once.

CameraBeardThePirate · July 8

Cominfordatoothbrush wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

The worst decision is to add major savagery AND prophecy to this skill... ZOS you had one job, nerf assassination skill line and you managed to buff it somehow once again...

It is a nerf, at least for PvE. Unless the 4 stack bow procs going faster end up outweighing 400wd

It likely won't outweigh the loss in weapon damage, but 20% extra bow casts is nothing to scoff at, even if the per cast damage is only 88% of merciless.

MashmalloMan · July 8

Mayrael wrote: »

ZOS, as usual, never backs down. They made a huge mistake by increasing the stack amount, and now they’ll wreck everything because they won’t undo the changes. Stacks should return to 5, and the passive bonus needs to be nerfed to about 125 spell and weapon damage at 5 stacks (25 per stack) to match a 1-piece set bonus—or just scrapped entirely since it’s paired with a heal. Otherwise, we’re headed for complete chaos.

I disagree, the problem isn't the stacks being doubled, that actually feels quite nice as a quality of life feature, and it's fun to use in all content now, deciding when to use both shots or not, to me, it's the burst damage.

For context using ESO skill websites with standardized stats.

Mercilous does 37% more damage than Bound Armaments in 1 hit vs spread out over 1.2s/4 hits.
Mercilous does 20% more damage than Dawnbeaker of Smiting.
Mercilous does 12% more damage than 120 ult Incap, while also adopting the +20% damage done from the ult itself.

At a tooltip of 4752, it deals more than any burst skill you can think of and you can use it every 5s. 20s dots have roughly around 6000 for their tooltips, but they deal it over such a long period of time that the DPS is only 300/s.

If you ask me, the skill should be changed into a burst + dot that leaves PvE unaffected. Eg. Instead of 4.7k in 1 hit, make it 3k that leaves a leaching poison for 4s with a 1.7k tooltip, scaling up to 100% damage done below 50% health. Burst goes down, total damage stays the same, but now leaves a strong dot that scales in execute, aka fitting the line's theme, buffing PvE, and balancing PvP.

Idk. I'm not gonna pretend everyone would like that, but there's no reason for it to hit as hard as it does with subclassing.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · July 8

Cominfordatoothbrush · July 8

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Cominfordatoothbrush wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

The worst decision is to add major savagery AND prophecy to this skill... ZOS you had one job, nerf assassination skill line and you managed to buff it somehow once again...

It is a nerf, at least for PvE. Unless the 4 stack bow procs going faster end up outweighing 400wd

It’s a nerf targeted at those beam builds because 95% of people just slotted it on the backbar for free 400 W/SD and never casted it once.

It's a nerf to pretty much any assassination build, but yeah, beams probably suffer most

gamergirldk · July 8

its a nerf to the build that only used it for passive buff, but if you active use the skills it cool, guess its even stronger in pvp

Teeba_Shei · July 8

Can we reduce the damage of this ability so it doesn't hit as hard as ultimate, especially now that you can fire it 3 times in a row?|

Some other poster had this idea

MashmalloMan wrote: »

If you ask me, the skill should be changed into a burst + dot that leaves PvE unaffected. Eg. Instead of 4.7k in 1 hit, make it 3k that leaves a leaching poison for 4s with a 1.7k tooltip, scaling up to 100% damage done below 50% health. Burst goes down, total damage stays the same, but now leaves a strong dot that scales in execute, aka fitting the line's theme, buffing PvE, and balancing PvP.

Seems like a good idea. Makes it so using it 3 times in a row isn't a good idea and reduces the burst. Right now every single person in pvp is just out there trying to one shot everyone else using delayed burst abilities + incap + merciless. The real problem is the merciless because it hits harder than anything else in the combo.

Tommy_The_Gun · July 8

Why do I have a feeling that something that I feared will happen is starting to happen ?

I mean it seems like ZOS does no longer look at "a class"... as if it is "a class" with certain tools that has some advantages here & some disadvantages there. It seems like they are rather looking at individual skill trees um... separately ?

I mean the only reason why Catalyst passive is getting nerf--hammerd (was it even OP since it has item cost ? ) is that OTHER classes can potentially have out-of-combat ulit gen by picking syphoning, oh noes, something like this was never meant to happen ? WE MEST NURF ! XD

I mean it looks like that. It is all cuz of subclassing. And it is just the 1st patch after sublassing was itroduced.... oh my... the class identity, build diversity and play-styles are all gonna end up in a blast furnace and what comes out of it will be what we have left....

xencthlu · July 8

Gee, I subclassed to the shadow line to get major proph/sav on a character. I... Guess I'll drop it now?

MashmalloMan · July 9

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

Even if the stack cap is reduced to 8, being able to Relentless -> ability -> Relentless-> ability -> Relentless is still crazy.

I was totally wrong, they are indeed, blind to the decisions they make and kept the ability at 10 stacks instead of 8. Normally I'm not surprised, I guess I should know better by now, but this takes the cake. How could they miss this lol. This is exactly like week 1 last PTS where they nerfed Bound Armaments by -10% while buffing Grim Focus to 600/450 w/s damage. 🤣

They can't even be bothered to hide the favouritism anymore.

Thumbless_Bot · July 9

Do you even need the ability in your sequence? Isn't it more like spec bow, la, spec bow, la, spec bow. The two la would give you the four stacks for the last proc. Three spec bow in 2 gcd from the first fire to the last.

They have to know this. They can't possibly not know this.... can they?

Mayrael · July 9

MashmalloMan wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

Even if the stack cap is reduced to 8, being able to Relentless -> ability -> Relentless-> ability -> Relentless is still crazy.

I was totally wrong, they are indeed, blind to the decisions they make and kept the ability at 10 stacks instead of 8. Normally I'm not surprised, I guess I should know better by now, but this takes the cake. How could they miss this lol. This is exactly like week 1 last PTS where they nerfed Bound Armaments by -10% while buffing Grim Focus to 600/450 w/s damage. 🤣

They can't even be bothered to hide the favouritism anymore.

This is pure madness... It is completly busted.

xAlucardx92 · July 9

Why not change it right away to: "if your target is not dead, you can use spec bow again".

wolfie1.0. · July 9

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Why do I have a feeling that something that I feared will happen is starting to happen ?

I mean it seems like ZOS does no longer look at "a class"... as if it is "a class" with certain tools that has some advantages here & some disadvantages there. It seems like they are rather looking at individual skill trees um... separately ?

I mean the only reason why Catalyst passive is getting nerf--hammerd (was it even OP since it has item cost ? ) is that OTHER classes can potentially have out-of-combat ulit gen by picking syphoning, oh noes, something like this was never meant to happen ? WE MEST NURF ! XD

I mean it looks like that. It is all cuz of subclassing. And it is just the 1st patch after sublassing was itroduced.... oh my... the class identity, build diversity and play-styles are all gonna end up in a blast furnace and what comes out of it will be what we have left....

Honestly, I expected this, and its going to be a mess at the end. Mainly because they are going to try to balance each class line and end up having to make more changes than they would if they had not done subclassing.

Prionyx · July 15

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

ZOS, as usual, never backs down. They made a huge mistake by increasing the stack amount, and now they’ll wreck everything because they won’t undo the changes. Stacks should return to 5, and the passive bonus needs to be nerfed to about 125 spell and weapon damage at 5 stacks (25 per stack) to match a 1-piece set bonus—or just scrapped entirely since it’s paired with a heal. Otherwise, we’re headed for complete chaos.

I disagree, the problem isn't the stacks being doubled, that actually feels quite nice as a quality of life feature, and it's fun to use in all content now, deciding when to use both shots or not, to me, it's the burst damage.

For context using ESO skill websites with standardized stats.

Mercilous does 37% more damage than Bound Armaments in 1 hit vs spread out over 1.2s/4 hits.
Mercilous does 20% more damage than Dawnbeaker of Smiting.
Mercilous does 12% more damage than 120 ult Incap, while also adopting the +20% damage done from the ult itself.

At a tooltip of 4752, it deals more than any burst skill you can think of and you can use it every 5s. 20s dots have roughly around 6000 for their tooltips, but they deal it over such a long period of time that the DPS is only 300/s.

If you ask me, the skill should be changed into a burst + dot that leaves PvE unaffected. Eg. Instead of 4.7k in 1 hit, make it 3k that leaves a leaching poison for 4s with a 1.7k tooltip, scaling up to 100% damage done below 50% health. Burst goes down, total damage stays the same, but now leaves a strong dot that scales in execute, aka fitting the line's theme, buffing PvE, and balancing PvP.

Idk. I'm not gonna pretend everyone would like that, but there's no reason for it to hit as hard as it does with subclassing.

What's your point? You're saying you want to buff merciless in pve and nerf in pvp but suggest changes that would make it worse in pve and better in pvp

Prionyx · July 15

MashmalloMan wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

There's nothing in the notes to suggest it still stacks to 10 other than a feeling that ZOS hasn't got a clue on how to balance this game properly.

I do think the intent is for the stack cap to be double of the stack requirement, thus going from 5 to 4 should make the cap go from 10 to 8.

In other words, it's now functionally identical to Bound Armaments, except it heals, deals 21% more damage, and fires in 1 fast projectile vs 4 delayed easy to dodge projectiles.

Even if the stack cap is reduced to 8, being able to Relentless -> ability -> Relentless-> ability -> Relentless is still crazy.

I was totally wrong, they are indeed, blind to the decisions they make and kept the ability at 10 stacks instead of 8. Normally I'm not surprised, I guess I should know better by now, but this takes the cake. How could they miss this lol. This is exactly like week 1 last PTS where they nerfed Bound Armaments by -10% while buffing Grim Focus to 600/450 w/s damage. 🤣

They can't even be bothered to hide the favouritism anymore.

Why would armaments be similar to merciless if there is already curse/prey in that skill line, which always provided more DPS for sorcs in pve before multiclassing compared to merciless for NBs and other morph(haunting curse) being undeniably better in pvp since it's a delayed burst while merciless isn't

ArctosCethlenn · July 15

I've said it before but they should really separate bowproc's damage into an initial hit plus a short dot. If it changed from X direct to 0.75X + 0.25X over three or four seconds, you'd have roughly the same damage per cast, but banking multiple shots to fire back to back would lose some upfront burst and overall damage via the dot ticks being overwritten. It's a hell of a pubstomping skill at the moment which isn't exactly healthy.

MashmalloMan · July 16

Prionyx wrote: »

Why would armaments be similar to merciless if there is already curse/prey in that skill line, which always provided more DPS for sorcs in pve before multiclassing compared to merciless for NBs and other morph(haunting curse) being undeniably better in pvp since it's a delayed burst while merciless isn't

Have you played with suclassing yet? Why are you acting like it doesn't exist and we're 6 months in the past. All skill lines are available to everyone and no class can strictly rely on what it can or can't do in its original class vaccum. Skils could be compared before, but now more than ever they need to be competitive 1:1 or you will just ignore the inferior opton all together.

It's funny you mentioned Daedric Prey and Daedric Summoning pve dps because a 2 pet Sorc can get more DPS substituing Dark Magic for Assassination, using Killer's Blade instead of Daedric Prey or Mages Fury, Surprise Attack instead of Frags, and Mercilous Resolve instead of Bound Armaments. Despite this, I mentioned buffing pve NB dps with the ultimate goal of nerfing its pvp burst , so I'm not sure why you made the comparison at all?

For Haunting Curse in pvp, it was a strong delayed burst skill, but it can be purged with Betty or Ritual, very popular skills available to everyone now. With the combination of Curse being unreliable, Bound Armaments being too weak, Ward no longer being a 1 stop shop after the double nerfs (triple with U47), dead pet skills, and inconsequential passives, no one is picking up this skill line outside of Sorc purists desperately trying to make it work despite better options being available.

I would put the ratio of people using Assassination over Daedric Summoning at 30:1 in pvp right now, in pve, 100:1. In 30+ vet trial pugs I've done, I've seen maybe 4-6 pets, but almost everyone is using Assassinatiton for passives or damage skills in conjunction with Fatecarver or otherwise.

All of this brings me to the conclusion you either refuse to subclass out of NB or you haven't played U46 very much in the competitive scene as your comments read as if they're from 2 updates ago. This is coming from someone who mains Sorc and has put Assassination on pretty much every build I have from 13 alt characters, to endgame pve, solo pve, and BG's pvp.

Prionyx wrote: »

What's your point? You're saying you want to buff merciless in pve and nerf in pvp but suggest changes that would make it worse in pve and better in pvp

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I disagree, the problem isn't the stacks being doubled, that actually feels quite nice as a quality of life feature, and it's fun to use in all content now, deciding when to use both shots or not, to me, it's the burst damage.

I feel like I explained my idea pretty well in my opening statement above, stacks aren't the problem, nor is pve NB dps, it's pvp burst. They already solved the issue of people slotting and forgetting Relentless Focus for w/s damage in pve, so my issue isn't there. The active portion of the ability still needs to be worth using in pve like it is now.

In pve, total dps is all that matters, how you get there generally does not, so burst isn't entirely necessary. In pvp, burst damage is obscenely high and is much more effective for securing kills vs dots. This is no longer only NB's tool with subclassing, we can't crutch on "they have no delayed burst" or "they have no defense" or "it's just 1 shot, block/dodge it, then punish them."

My solution was keep the total dps the same by converting some of the upfront damage into a 4s dot. At full health the total dps is the same, but at low health, NB's would get some execute scaling on the dot portion (not the burst), allowing a buff in pve, while a rebalance for pvp that stops players from getting 1 shotted as often and gives a small window to retaliate/react since some power is shifted to a dot.

MashmalloMan · July 16

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

I've said it before but they should really separate bowproc's damage into an initial hit plus a short dot. If it changed from X direct to 0.75X + 0.25X over three or four seconds, you'd have roughly the same damage per cast, but banking multiple shots to fire back to back would lose some upfront burst and overall damage via the dot ticks being overwritten. It's a hell of a pubstomping skill at the moment which isn't exactly healthy.

This is exactly what I was saying above, although I added that the 0.25x dot could scale to 0.5x for a small pve buff that wouldn't really effect pvp negatively while being a thematically fun change for NB's damage kit.