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Overall Combat and Armor Feedback for Dark Brotherhood Patch 2.4.5
exiledtyrant
✭✭✭
DB has been out for a few days so I thought I would leave some overall combat and set piece feedback. My perspective will be coming from the viewpoint of a stamina sorcerer. I also spent the majority of my time doing PvP on Azura so I can’t offer a lot of PvE feedback. That being said let’s get into it.
Overall combat feels really good so far. Everything I have been using has been buffed over the last few months. I find a lot of my skills are much more functional and fun now. PvP on the no CP campaign has been extremely entertaining and balanced despite a few bugs that popped up this week. I haven’t had this much fun in Cyrodil for at least 3 patch cycles. The map goes through some pretty sweeping and dynamic shifts and each side feels like it has a fighting chance so far.
I will note that the ultimate bug has been beyond frustrating. I’ve had several occasions where I would spam my ultimate button in combat only to have my character wave their arms up and down constantly doing nothing. It appears to only happen after taking damage or while kept in combat. I’ve read that a fix is coming so hopefully it is resolved next week.
Silver Leash – This skill functions terribly on live. It seemed like the saving grace for builds without access to a gap closer, but the skill fell flat instead. The leash pull doesn’t work while I am moving. The leash doesn’t work while the enemy is moving. The pull can be dodged. The pull can fail just because it feels like it. I have never gotten a leash pull off when I actually wanted it to. I It feels like I should have never morphed it because a majority of the time I can’t get the second activation to work at all. The 2 shot activation is also clunky.
Evil Hunter - There is only one skill that is spammable in the fighter guild line and that skill is silver shards. All the other skills are duration based. This leaves the % fighter guild skill reduction largely wasted. The duration is also fairly low even for a super niche build that would spam silver shards. I leave this skill unmorphed because evil hunter is so uncompelling and camouflage hunter is to situational for my play style. Evil hunter needs something else for this morph to make sense.
Ring of Preservation – The dodge buff is good, but the skill it’s on is not. The circle is small and stationary. Dodging is an activity that usually involves a lot of moving and repositioning. This makes it very hard to actually benefit from circle of protection’s dodge reduction.
Flurry – Flurry and its morphs are great now. It gives me the killing power DW was sorely lacking. Bloodthrist wasn’t performing as well as I hoped in PvP . Healing, even when paired with blood craze, was lacking.
Hidden blade – Shrouded daggers is actually useful now. To bad it puts you in range of a massive kill zone that bows zone everyone out of. It would be nice if both morphs had the range of flying blade and flying blade actually did something cool instead.
Pets in general – I don’t mind pets costing magicka, but if stamina is ever going to make use of them they have to either drop the magicka scaling or gain utility that isn’t resource reliant. If pets were designed more like surge they could serve every sorcerer playstyle without exclusion. I definitely want the option to use clannfear as a form of mitigation or twilight as a form of added DPS, but that’s not an option right now.
Surge - Surge feels pretty bad in PvP. I never pop surge and think” this will be what helps me turn the tables”. The healing just isn’t there even when I procc it on cooldown. I have resorted to stacking vigor + surge + dark deal and I still haven’t seen myself heal as well as the other classes. Maybe it is time to try tuning the internal cooldown instead of the base value. If I could proc the heal more often small heals would actually begin to add up.
Dark Deal – The stamina return on this skill is insane. 8k magicka for 20k+ stamina is definitely a fair trade. Dark deal has also been able to negate 2 consecutive dodge rolls which can be pretty nice in large battles. It gets me in and out of the action pretty successfully. It is absolutely terrible as an emergency heal though. I don’t want the skill to be instant cast, but I would like ways to reduce the cast time through smart play. I proposed that the exploitation passive get reworked in such a way. I’ll plug it here again:
Dark Prophecy - The Sorcerer and up to 5 other players in their group can receive a stack of Dark prophecy when they block or dodge an attack. Each stack of Dark prophecy reduces the cast time of their next ability by 25/50%. Dark prophecy stacks up to 2 times and last for 5 seconds.
I love the new heavy armor. It has a good blend of offense and defense. Resource regeneration feels very active. It relies on playing aggressive instead of using on passive resource regeneration and reduction. Heavy armor doesn’t really seem to have caught on yet, but I think that will change in the coming months. Heavy armor has a lot of fun 5 piece bonuses and the pieces themselves are extremely cheap.
Affliction – Fun set. I like flat damage sets in general. This one could use a damage bump to at least be comparable to powered enchantments. Most 4 second effects are beating this thing by a mile. It does pair well with other flat damage sources however, and offers a nice disease proc. I combined this 5 piece with 5 fasala’s guile for some pretty heavy heal reduction. I also pair it with Fury or Morihaus for more damage or utility. There is a bug that has this set proc its disease damage whenever I am hit, and when I deal damage. It should only proc when I deal damage. The proc could also be bumped to 100%. Light weaving alone makes this set practically 100% proc chance anyway.
Warrior’s Fury – The 5 piece bonus is to situational and doesn’t last long enough. I only get to see this 5 piece stack during huge sieges. Even when stacked I have such a small time frame to use it that the bonus usually goes to waste. This leaves me running around for a large portion of AVA combat without a 5 piece bonus. It’s just not a practical bonus and now that ravager has been upgraded this set is in even more trouble. When I finish my ravager set fury will wind up mothballed. Building in power is a cool theme, but the current execution just doesn’t play well.
Morihaus – Fun set. Wasn’t as useful as I pictured it would be. Kind of falls flat fighting ranged opponents. An AOE knockdown that last around 1.5 seconds shouldn't be undervalued though. I still like this set a lot. Looking back I am surprised it didn’t have stamina recovery as one of its bonuses though.
Sergeant’s Mail – The 5 piece bonus just feels cringe worthy. Where does this fully charged heavy attack bonus fit in? The undaunted infiltrator set did what this set does but better.
I just wanted to end by giving some suggestions for skills/ passives I would like to see changed or revitalized. I think focusing more on the movement and buffing involved in sorcerer game play could open up some unique options to play around with.
Base Line pet changes:
Pets now scale with champion point bonuses.
Pets can now activate synergies for their master based on the Sorcerer’s stats. (would let sorcerers use synergy abilities by themselves)
Unstable familiar’s health scaled up to 50k at max level.
Summon Winged Twilight health scaled up to 30k at max level.
Summon Storm Atronach’s health now scaled up to 100k at max level.
Pet damage now scales with highest resource (health , stamina, or magicka).
Pet are no longer toggles. Pets will now act as a 1 minute buff that must be resummoned when their timer ends.
Daedric Summoning:
Unstable Clannfear – Deals X physical damage and releases an AOE taunt every 5 seconds. Heals the Sorcerer for X% of their max health per second while active.
Bound armor – Bestows the Minor Resolve and Minor Ward buff while slotted.
Bound Armaments – Bestows the Minor Resolve and Minor Ward buff while slotted. When activated the sorcerer’s weapons begin to store energy. After landing X light attacks the stored energy explodes dealing X physical damage and knocking enemies off balance for X seconds.
Bound Aegis – Bestows the Minor Resolve and Minor Ward buff slotted. When activated the Sorcerer’s armor begins storing energy. After moving X distance the stored energy generates a damage shield absorbing X damage.
Rebate – Each time a buff times out restore 4/8% of the Sorcerer’s highest resource (stamina, magicka, or health)
Dark Magic:
Encase: Now acts as a PBAOE that projects from the center of the caster.
Shattering Prison: Scales with stamina/weapon damage. Immobilizes for X seconds. When the immobilize ends deals X physical.
Blood Magic: Restores 4/8% max health whenever a buff is applied to Sorcerer.
Storm Calling:
Streak – Streak through enemies dealing X physical damage. Enemies hit by Streak are knocked off balance for X seconds. If the enemy is already off balance Streak knocks them down instead for X seconds.
Edited by exiledtyrant on June 5, 2016 12:34AM
Overall Combat
Overall combat feels really good so far. Everything I have been using has been buffed over the last few months. I find a lot of my skills are much more functional and fun now. PvP on the no CP campaign has been extremely entertaining and balanced despite a few bugs that popped up this week. I haven’t had this much fun in Cyrodil for at least 3 patch cycles. The map goes through some pretty sweeping and dynamic shifts and each side feels like it has a fighting chance so far.
I will note that the ultimate bug has been beyond frustrating. I’ve had several occasions where I would spam my ultimate button in combat only to have my character wave their arms up and down constantly doing nothing. It appears to only happen after taking damage or while kept in combat. I’ve read that a fix is coming so hopefully it is resolved next week.
General Skills
Silver Leash – This skill functions terribly on live. It seemed like the saving grace for builds without access to a gap closer, but the skill fell flat instead. The leash pull doesn’t work while I am moving. The leash doesn’t work while the enemy is moving. The pull can be dodged. The pull can fail just because it feels like it. I have never gotten a leash pull off when I actually wanted it to. I It feels like I should have never morphed it because a majority of the time I can’t get the second activation to work at all. The 2 shot activation is also clunky.
Evil Hunter - There is only one skill that is spammable in the fighter guild line and that skill is silver shards. All the other skills are duration based. This leaves the % fighter guild skill reduction largely wasted. The duration is also fairly low even for a super niche build that would spam silver shards. I leave this skill unmorphed because evil hunter is so uncompelling and camouflage hunter is to situational for my play style. Evil hunter needs something else for this morph to make sense.
Ring of Preservation – The dodge buff is good, but the skill it’s on is not. The circle is small and stationary. Dodging is an activity that usually involves a lot of moving and repositioning. This makes it very hard to actually benefit from circle of protection’s dodge reduction.
Flurry – Flurry and its morphs are great now. It gives me the killing power DW was sorely lacking. Bloodthrist wasn’t performing as well as I hoped in PvP . Healing, even when paired with blood craze, was lacking.
Hidden blade – Shrouded daggers is actually useful now. To bad it puts you in range of a massive kill zone that bows zone everyone out of. It would be nice if both morphs had the range of flying blade and flying blade actually did something cool instead.
Sorcerer Skills
Pets in general – I don’t mind pets costing magicka, but if stamina is ever going to make use of them they have to either drop the magicka scaling or gain utility that isn’t resource reliant. If pets were designed more like surge they could serve every sorcerer playstyle without exclusion. I definitely want the option to use clannfear as a form of mitigation or twilight as a form of added DPS, but that’s not an option right now.
Surge - Surge feels pretty bad in PvP. I never pop surge and think” this will be what helps me turn the tables”. The healing just isn’t there even when I procc it on cooldown. I have resorted to stacking vigor + surge + dark deal and I still haven’t seen myself heal as well as the other classes. Maybe it is time to try tuning the internal cooldown instead of the base value. If I could proc the heal more often small heals would actually begin to add up.
Dark Deal – The stamina return on this skill is insane. 8k magicka for 20k+ stamina is definitely a fair trade. Dark deal has also been able to negate 2 consecutive dodge rolls which can be pretty nice in large battles. It gets me in and out of the action pretty successfully. It is absolutely terrible as an emergency heal though. I don’t want the skill to be instant cast, but I would like ways to reduce the cast time through smart play. I proposed that the exploitation passive get reworked in such a way. I’ll plug it here again:
Dark Prophecy - The Sorcerer and up to 5 other players in their group can receive a stack of Dark prophecy when they block or dodge an attack. Each stack of Dark prophecy reduces the cast time of their next ability by 25/50%. Dark prophecy stacks up to 2 times and last for 5 seconds.
Heavy Armor
I love the new heavy armor. It has a good blend of offense and defense. Resource regeneration feels very active. It relies on playing aggressive instead of using on passive resource regeneration and reduction. Heavy armor doesn’t really seem to have caught on yet, but I think that will change in the coming months. Heavy armor has a lot of fun 5 piece bonuses and the pieces themselves are extremely cheap.
Set Bonuses
Affliction – Fun set. I like flat damage sets in general. This one could use a damage bump to at least be comparable to powered enchantments. Most 4 second effects are beating this thing by a mile. It does pair well with other flat damage sources however, and offers a nice disease proc. I combined this 5 piece with 5 fasala’s guile for some pretty heavy heal reduction. I also pair it with Fury or Morihaus for more damage or utility. There is a bug that has this set proc its disease damage whenever I am hit, and when I deal damage. It should only proc when I deal damage. The proc could also be bumped to 100%. Light weaving alone makes this set practically 100% proc chance anyway.
Warrior’s Fury – The 5 piece bonus is to situational and doesn’t last long enough. I only get to see this 5 piece stack during huge sieges. Even when stacked I have such a small time frame to use it that the bonus usually goes to waste. This leaves me running around for a large portion of AVA combat without a 5 piece bonus. It’s just not a practical bonus and now that ravager has been upgraded this set is in even more trouble. When I finish my ravager set fury will wind up mothballed. Building in power is a cool theme, but the current execution just doesn’t play well.
Morihaus – Fun set. Wasn’t as useful as I pictured it would be. Kind of falls flat fighting ranged opponents. An AOE knockdown that last around 1.5 seconds shouldn't be undervalued though. I still like this set a lot. Looking back I am surprised it didn’t have stamina recovery as one of its bonuses though.
Sergeant’s Mail – The 5 piece bonus just feels cringe worthy. Where does this fully charged heavy attack bonus fit in? The undaunted infiltrator set did what this set does but better.
Sorcerer Suggestions
I just wanted to end by giving some suggestions for skills/ passives I would like to see changed or revitalized. I think focusing more on the movement and buffing involved in sorcerer game play could open up some unique options to play around with.
Base Line pet changes:
Pets now scale with champion point bonuses.
Pets can now activate synergies for their master based on the Sorcerer’s stats. (would let sorcerers use synergy abilities by themselves)
Unstable familiar’s health scaled up to 50k at max level.
Summon Winged Twilight health scaled up to 30k at max level.
Summon Storm Atronach’s health now scaled up to 100k at max level.
Pet damage now scales with highest resource (health , stamina, or magicka).
Pet are no longer toggles. Pets will now act as a 1 minute buff that must be resummoned when their timer ends.
Daedric Summoning:
Unstable Clannfear – Deals X physical damage and releases an AOE taunt every 5 seconds. Heals the Sorcerer for X% of their max health per second while active.
Bound armor – Bestows the Minor Resolve and Minor Ward buff while slotted.
Bound Armaments – Bestows the Minor Resolve and Minor Ward buff while slotted. When activated the sorcerer’s weapons begin to store energy. After landing X light attacks the stored energy explodes dealing X physical damage and knocking enemies off balance for X seconds.
Bound Aegis – Bestows the Minor Resolve and Minor Ward buff slotted. When activated the Sorcerer’s armor begins storing energy. After moving X distance the stored energy generates a damage shield absorbing X damage.
Rebate – Each time a buff times out restore 4/8% of the Sorcerer’s highest resource (stamina, magicka, or health)
Dark Magic:
Encase: Now acts as a PBAOE that projects from the center of the caster.
Shattering Prison: Scales with stamina/weapon damage. Immobilizes for X seconds. When the immobilize ends deals X physical.
Blood Magic: Restores 4/8% max health whenever a buff is applied to Sorcerer.
Storm Calling:
Streak – Streak through enemies dealing X physical damage. Enemies hit by Streak are knocked off balance for X seconds. If the enemy is already off balance Streak knocks them down instead for X seconds.
If all are brethren
How could my hands not tremble
As breath fled my prey?
What blinds my vision?
My hands are tools; it must be
The haze of blossoms
-Salous the Penitent
How could my hands not tremble
As breath fled my prey?
What blinds my vision?
My hands are tools; it must be
The haze of blossoms
-Salous the Penitent
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