Help me find a solid counter

Cathexis

Hi there, I play an orc bow sorc that is speed oriented. I do pretty well in battles/groups, and in straight up one on one fights I can hold pretty well, but when I'm running to battles I get jumped by pansy nightblades and to a lesser extent templars who play like pansies with telestun from hidden. Right now my defensive stats are overcharged, and I've got cc/stun breaks on my hotbar, but there is just no way to get away from the pansy-gank builds.

What I need is an active stun counter so that I don't get dropped without any chance to fight back, any ideas?

kirnmalidus

Don't get jumped by Nightblades. We are assassins, and if we get the jump on you it should mean death.

Halrloprillalar

kirnmalidus wrote: »

Don't get jumped by Nightblades. We are assassins, and if we get the jump on you it should mean death.

idk a lot of classes can do really high burst out of stealth. The horse fall animation is probably the biggest reason for easy ganks in the game

kirnmalidus

Halrloprillalar wrote: »

kirnmalidus wrote: »

Don't get jumped by Nightblades. We are assassins, and if we get the jump on you it should mean death.

idk a lot of classes can do really high burst out of stealth. The horse fall animation is probably the biggest reason for easy ganks in the game

True. I guess a better statement would've been don't get jumped.

Seriously though, run Magelight.

Halrloprillalar

kirnmalidus wrote: »

Halrloprillalar wrote: »

kirnmalidus wrote: »

Don't get jumped by Nightblades. We are assassins, and if we get the jump on you it should mean death.

idk a lot of classes can do really high burst out of stealth. The horse fall animation is probably the biggest reason for easy ganks in the game

True. I guess a better statement would've been don't get jumped.

Seriously though, run Magelight.

the stealth detect radius on that is pathetic. You will die from ganks even with that on, unless you run the other morph which is far more useless overall for casters.

Cathexis

I use leather (as I said all my defensive stats are overcharged), so my detect radius is huge. But even when I stumble on them first its just stun stun stun stun until dead. Reactionary counters don't work, at all.

As for you being "assassins" I prefer to think it just means your a puss cat who doesn't want to fight.

Puss cat.

*beats blood orc chest at you*

IcyDeadPeople

When you hear the audio cue for ambush or snipe, simply start blocking.

Rosveen

Cathexis wrote: »

I use leather (as I said all my defensive stats are overcharged), so my detect radius is huge. But even when I stumble on them first its just stun stun stun stun until dead. Reactionary counters don't work, at all.

Medium armor doesn't help you see stealthers, it helps you stay in stealth.

kirnmalidus

Halrloprillalar wrote: »

kirnmalidus wrote: »

Halrloprillalar wrote: »

kirnmalidus wrote: »

Don't get jumped by Nightblades. We are assassins, and if we get the jump on you it should mean death.

idk a lot of classes can do really high burst out of stealth. The horse fall animation is probably the biggest reason for easy ganks in the game

True. I guess a better statement would've been don't get jumped.

Seriously though, run Magelight.

the stealth detect radius on that is pathetic. You will die from ganks even with that on, unless you run the other morph which is far more useless overall for casters.

Yeah, I run that morph. I'm not a caster, so for me it is quite useful. My primary role when we run as a group is scouting, and I wouldn't be very effective at that without Magelight.

nukeyoo

i heard light armor resto staff bolt escape were gud...

Cathexis

ahh ok decreases detection area size not increases alright...

Regardless, it makes no difference anyway, since they teleport on top of you.

Audio queue for blocking is one option; simply blocking isn't exactly effective though when you get hit with stun 4 times.

Think I've worked something out though through experimentation, but still taking ideas.

shanersimms_ESO

Cathexis wrote: »

Hi there, I play an orc bow sorc that is speed oriented. I do pretty well in battles/groups, and in straight up one on one fights I can hold pretty well, but when I'm running to battles I get jumped by pansy nightblades and to a lesser extent templars who play like pansies with telestun from hidden. Right now my defensive stats are overcharged, and I've got cc/stun breaks on my hotbar, but there is just no way to get away from the pansy-gank builds.

What I need is an active stun counter so that I don't get dropped without any chance to fight back, any ideas?

A couple of suggestions:

1. Get Immovable, it does the pretty much the same thing as your stun breaker but adds armor and resistances. You can use this before even being engaged which can let you regen some stamina a second or two before the fight begins. This ability can be used even if you aren't wearing any pieces of heavy armor.

2. If they do get the jump on you, immediately use stun breaker and parry up. Once stun breaker wears off use immovable. These abilities used in conjunction will give you stun immunity for a significant amount of time.

3. Buy/craft detection potions.

4. Based on your build it may be beneficial to get Magelight, but then morph it to receive less damage from stealth attacks. Even if it doesn't help reveal because the radius is crap at the moment, you can mitigate some more damage from those stealthy assassins.

5. Raise your armor. As a 7/7 cloth sorc I actually have more Armor than spell resist because I enchant all three pieces of jewelry with armor (+600 per at V12 legendary enchant). My jewelry alone gives me 1800 armor...

6. You should also allocate all of your attribute points into health, then enchant your gear with magicka. I did a similar build as a sorc and have both health and magicka overcharged. You may want to use the Lord boon to further increase your health.

Anyways, hope these thoughts help. Just remember, in this game those who engage first generally have the upper hand and will stat you faster than you can stat them in many cases. If all else fails you can roll a healing staff. Couple that with immovable and you should be able to keep your stats up from the initial ambush, before attempting to turn the fight back on them.

-Lord Shaszahan, of The Septim Bloodline

EDIT: Realized OP mentioned he was a Sorc. Suggest enchanting gear with Magicka not Stamina...

Cathexis

Thanks for the suggestions!

My defensive stats are overcharged, detect potions won't be effective enough, and break/immovable is a descent combo but you still end up starting at a disadvantage because of initial damage.

edit; i didn't realize magelight can reduce damage from stealth attacks, thats great!

Glantris

radiant magelight (the stealth attack reduction morph) only affects allies, and doesn't help you. tested this a while ago. also, i'm not sure that the developers know what a metre is. magelight's detection range is definitely less than 12 metres. i'm pretty sure that if you're a sorc, critical surge + inner light is like bread and butter.

armour's mitigation sucks and does next to nothing. find a friend on another faction and test it for yourself - it only mitigates physical damage, and its something like for every 100-150 armour points you get 1% mitigation. it's essentially useless, so don't rely on it.

everyone, every class, every role should be running immovable, so it's good you've picked it up. on the other hand, if you can pick up at least 5 armour pieces with the impenetrable trait, you'll have less of an issue with sneak attacks and heavy crits in general. this is something that most serious pvpers do and it's why being built for crit (unless a healer or a sorc) isn't all that hot right now.

you're never going to not be ganked, but this is all good stuff to know. let us all know how it goes.

shanersimms_ESO

Glantris wrote: »

radiant magelight (the stealth attack reduction morph) only affects allies, and doesn't help you. tested this a while ago. also, i'm not sure that the developers know what a metre is. magelight's detection range is definitely less than 12 metres. i'm pretty sure that if you're a sorc, critical surge + inner light is like bread and butter.

armour's mitigation sucks and does next to nothing. find a friend on another faction and test it for yourself - it only mitigates physical damage, and its something like for every 100-150 armour points you get 1% mitigation. it's essentially useless, so don't rely on it.

everyone, every class, every role should be running immovable, so it's good you've picked it up. on the other hand, if you can pick up at least 5 armour pieces with the impenetrable trait, you'll have less of an issue with sneak attacks and heavy crits in general. this is something that most serious pvpers do and it's why being built for crit (unless a healer or a sorc) isn't all that hot right now.

you're never going to not be ganked, but this is all good stuff to know. let us all know how it goes.

Ahh that would be a shame if that's the case with mage light. Might be something to test again since patches in case it was a bug.

As a Sorc myself I do not run Critical Surge and Inner light, mainly because I focus primarily on resto staff. As of right now my offensive bar runs elemental drain, immovable, velocitous curse, mage's fury, and crushing shock. This does well vs the DK Reflects as none of those offensive spells are reflectable and they are instant casts and I can leach mana to sustain. If I am jumped I just immovable and swap to resto staff and stat up.

Build works great for me, but if you want the high crit chance dps gank build, then I would agree that inner light and critical surge are bread and butter.

Oh also, the armor benefit may not be staggering but compared to other enchants for jewelry it is arguably the best imo. Even if your numbers are correct that 100-150 armor gains 1% mitigation, then my 2200 armor nets me up to an extra 22% mitigation. If the opposition in cloth/mediumusually runs with.. say 1200 armor, that 1000 extra armor translates to an extra 10% health bar my opponent lacks.

Again this scenario is theoretical and using the values you provided, but I think the point is clear. It would be nice to get solid numbers to compare how +weapon or +spell damage enchants compare to +armor on jewelry, but I don't have much trouble doing damage typically, but rather always wanting a larger health/mitigation pool.

-Lord Shaszahan, of the Septim Bloodline

Edited for clarity and accuracy.

DeLindsay

Cathexis wrote: »

Hi there, I play an orc bow sorc that is speed oriented. I do pretty well in battles/groups, and in straight up one on one fights I can hold pretty well, but when I'm running to battles I get jumped by pansy nightblades and to a lesser extent templars who play like pansies with telestun from hidden. Right now my defensive stats are overcharged, and I've got cc/stun breaks on my hotbar, but there is just no way to get away from the pansy-gank builds.

What I need is an active stun counter so that I don't get dropped without any chance to fight back, any ideas?

You pretty much lost all credibility when you called other's use of personal playstyle as pansies.

IB4 "L2P NOOB"

Halrloprillalar

Cathexis wrote: »

Hi there, I play an orc bow sorc that is speed oriented. I do pretty well in battles/groups, and in straight up one on one fights I can hold pretty well, but when I'm running to battles I get jumped by pansy nightblades and to a lesser extent templars who play like pansies with telestun from hidden. Right now my defensive stats are overcharged, and I've got cc/stun breaks on my hotbar, but there is just no way to get away from the pansy-gank builds.

What I need is an active stun counter so that I don't get dropped without any chance to fight back, any ideas?

blocking or immovable, but that's about it. if you don't prevent cc there is no way to stop it other than breakout (which is wishy washy in the way it works atm)

Chalybos

Granite makes for a nice counter. Soapstone, too.

kirnmalidus

DeLindsay wrote: »

Cathexis wrote: »

Hi there, I play an orc bow sorc that is speed oriented. I do pretty well in battles/groups, and in straight up one on one fights I can hold pretty well, but when I'm running to battles I get jumped by pansy nightblades and to a lesser extent templars who play like pansies with telestun from hidden. Right now my defensive stats are overcharged, and I've got cc/stun breaks on my hotbar, but there is just no way to get away from the pansy-gank builds.

What I need is an active stun counter so that I don't get dropped without any chance to fight back, any ideas?

You pretty much lost all credibility when you called other's use of personal playstyle as pansies.

IB4 "L2P NOOB"

I took that as him RPing an Orc, so it didn't bother me.

Regarding the magelight morphs only affecting allies (and not the player), Zenimax has stated multiple times that "allies" includes the player in tooltip text. So if it isn't currently impacting the player (I haven't tested it and other seem to have done so), I would guess that is a bug and not intended.

Glantris

shanersimms_ESO wrote: »

Glantris wrote: »

armour's mitigation sucks and does next to nothing. find a friend on another faction and test it for yourself - it only mitigates physical damage, and its something like for every 100-150 armour points you get 1% mitigation. it's essentially useless, so don't rely on it.

/snip

Oh also, the armor benefit may not be staggering but compared to other enchants for jewelry it is arguably the best imo. Even if your numbers are correct that 100-150 armor gains 1% mitigation, then my 2200 armor nets me up to an extra 22% mitigation. If the opposition in cloth/mediumusually runs with.. say 1200 armor, that 1000 extra armor translates to an extra 10% health bar my opponent lacks.

(more /snip)

-Lord Shaszahan, of the Septim Bloodline

Edited for clarity and accuracy.

nah mate. if anything, cost reduction enchants are where it's at. do you even run sets? i'll humour you, but 22% mitigation from physical attacks really doesn't count for much if you consider that physical attacks are ones based out of stamina and also take into account the state of stamina-based builds in pvp at the moment. that means basic attacks not from staves and feats?

what faction are you? if you're NA, i'm willing to test this with you if we can.

Armitas

shanersimms_ESO wrote: »

As of right now my offensive bar runs elemental drain, immovable, velocitous curse, mage's fury, and crushing shock. This does well vs the DK Reflects as none of those offensive spells are reflectable and they are instant casts and I can leach mana to sustain. If I am jumped I just immovable and swap to resto staff and stat up.

Are you sure about crushing shock not reflecting? I had thought that it was getting reflected so I always switched over to my ghost buster staff.

Kiljaz

Cathexis wrote: »

I use leather (as I said all my defensive stats are overcharged), so my detect radius is huge. But even when I stumble on them first its just stun stun stun stun until dead. Reactionary counters don't work, at all.

As for you being "assassins" I prefer to think it just means your a puss cat who doesn't want to fight.

Puss cat.

*beats blood orc chest at you*

CC break and then block... NBs run out of magicka faster than anyone if they're assassins in medium armor. Incredible burst, but very easy to counter.

Mitharus

Kiljaz wrote: »

NBs run out of magicka faster than anyone if they're assassins in medium armor

Ugh... isn't that the truth. *sigh*

-M

ferzalrwb17_ESO

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

When you hear the audio cue for ambush or snipe, simply start blocking.

Man.. decent latency and no server lag must rock.

If I hear or see the ambush animation at all before I'm dead it's sometime after I'm stunned. Usually I just drop down dead and then recap tells me a bunch of stuff that apparently happened. I might see one or two animations sometimes.

Even when the server and my own latency are behaving I won't hear ambush or snipe before they hit (no chance) and I've never seen anyone else react in time either. It's also hard to block on a horse.

The solution is: don't get ganked. If you do... "meh. You got me dude". If you get done twice (or more as I've seen people do) then try headbutting a wall instead.

kijima

So, what you are saying is, If I was 1v1 with you, with my Nightblade who is setup as an assassin with DW/Bow you'd own me. (which you probably would)

But if I use my skill sets to sneak up on you and stick two daggers where it hurts you get bent out of shape because a leather wearing panzy stabbed you to death? ( I didn't kill you about 11 billion times last night on NA dawnbreaker at Chalman did I?)

Hrm, yeah I don't see 'that' being the issue.

I try my hardest not to get into a big battle with DK's running around with sword and board at close quarters, and if I do manage to stay alive, it's only because I'm slippery enough to get away, but my build doesn't let me 1v1 them, nor do I expect it to. I bet your's does though, and at times I'm envious of that. Truly I am, but my expectation is that my build does what it does, and does it well.

And perhaps, that is your issue. Your expecting to survive after a well executed NB assassination, perhaps your expectation is too high? I'm not trying to be clever here or talk in any way of authority of the game (I'm not the best player and clearly not in a position too) but I'll give you my experiences.

When an NB stealth attacks me, if he doesn't get me from the back and I die immediately, it turns into a game of 'see who can stealth for the longest' and for the most part it's evenly matched and a LOT of fun. I can run 1v1 with most NB's that aren't 7 light and resto that is.

Another thing is I have found on the odd occasion a player that can very effectively use mage light to find me, sometimes almost 'too' good and I enjoy those encounters. Usually, I die too which is fine. I expect every attack to have an equal defence, and it is out there. That's what makes this game fun I reckon. Have a look at some of the armour sets and enchantments that work well with mage light and decreasing stealth radius, because some people are doing that very well.

Morostyle

Immovable + Mistform = gg/cya later

JackDaniell

If you ride along on a horse and someone doesn't kill you, shame on them.

It is incredibly easy to kill someone like this. Now allot of people like to run full glass stealth-to-dead-to-stealth builds. The thing about these builds is that they do not sustain themselves well at all.

If you get jumped and survive the jump your opponent will almost always try to run because they are generally not very useful in any prolonged combat. Nightblades are one of the few classes that can fail an assassination attempt and utilize stealth to escape said attempt.

My advice would be don't make yourself vulnerable, don't sprint on your horse if its unsafe, as soon as you get attacked be ready to CC break and/or block. And always, while in PvP your first concern should be survivability. Once you can survive, then you can worry about killing others. A dead man isn't much use in combat.

Note: And sometimes if its a few people jumping you at the same time your just going to die all you can do is re enter the situation and this time be ready for them.

"You learn the most from the fights you don't win"

Renuo

I would comment on the purpose of the thread but still loling about your definition of "pansy play".

The entire post went from a strategy discussion to suddenly illustrating you just got ganked a couple times and felt compelled to make a thread.

shanersimms_ESO

Armitas wrote: »

shanersimms_ESO wrote: »

As of right now my offensive bar runs elemental drain, immovable, velocitous curse, mage's fury, and crushing shock. This does well vs the DK Reflects as none of those offensive spells are reflectable and they are instant casts and I can leach mana to sustain. If I am jumped I just immovable and swap to resto staff and stat up.

Are you sure about crushing shock not reflecting? I had thought that it was getting reflected so I always switched over to my ghost buster staff.

Yeah pretty much positive. I'd hate to end up putting my foot in my mouth, but the reflect is why I took dark crystals off my bar altogether. Using those abilities listed (including crushing shock) on a Dragon Knight who is spamming reflect seems to be doing wonders for me as of late.

-Lord Shaszahan, of The Septim Bloodline.

shanersimms_ESO

shanersimms_ESO wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

shanersimms_ESO wrote: »

As of right now my offensive bar runs elemental drain, immovable, velocitous curse, mage's fury, and crushing shock. This does well vs the DK Reflects as none of those offensive spells are reflectable and they are instant casts and I can leach mana to sustain. If I am jumped I just immovable and swap to resto staff and stat up.

Are you sure about crushing shock not reflecting? I had thought that it was getting reflected so I always switched over to my ghost buster staff.

Yeah pretty much positive. I'd hate to end up putting my foot in my mouth, but the reflect is why I took dark crystals off my bar altogether. Using those abilities listed (including crushing shock) on a Dragon Knight who is spamming reflect seems to be doing wonders for me as of late.

-Lord Shaszahan, of The Septim Bloodline.

Oh and keep in mind it WILL reflect any light attack you do after crushing shock, which is common, so watch out for that.

-Lord Shaszahan, of The Septim Bloodline.

glavius

99% sure crushing shock gets reflected