Details of Sneak Attacks?

ArchMikem

I decied to put a Dual Wield layout on my Magicka Templar's back bar to change up my playstyle and rank up DW. And since im a stickler for Criticals im using precise daggers. But theres something amiss here. Before when i played my Dragonknight i used DW Swords and i spent quite a bit of time sneak attacking my way through quests. What i noticed when pulling off a successful attack was a custom attack animation, and if there were a group of them, the attack wouldnt alert the rest to my presence if i got the mob in one hit.

This time with my templar, i havent seen one attack cause a custom animation, and even when pulling off a one hit on a mob ive always been detected. Am i not understanding something? Is it a class thing? Is it due to my DW skill being so low in proportion to the mobs im fighting?

ArchMikem

Okay, so i just answered my own question. I went back to Deshaan to test on a low level mob and sure enough i pulled off attacks where i remained hidden. No custom attack animation like with dual swords though. Unfortunate.

ArchMikem

Sorry for the bump but i seem to still be having this issue on another character. Even though im sneak attacking a lone cp40 mob and getting it successful in one hit it still takes me out of stealth each time.

What am i missing here? Everything im doing should keep me hidden.

Curragraigue

Factors that might affect stealth are racial passives and armour passives giving a wider area of not being detected. Some non-combat mobs can detect you which brings you out of stealth even though there are no combative mobs nearby.

phaneub17_ESO

Medium armor vs Light armor?

ArchMikem

Curragraigue wrote: »

Factors that might affect stealth are racial passives and armour passives giving a wider area of not being detected. Some non-combat mobs can detect you which brings you out of stealth even though there are no combative mobs nearby.

Khajiit have racial passives that seems to be perfect for this like Stealthy and Carnage. Although does type of armor affect the outcome? I have a mix of 5pc Light and 2pc Heavy. I remember for a long time in the beginning I fitted the character with a mix of Light and Medium and never had a problem with stealth attacks.

lolo_01b16_ESO

Unique animation sounds like you are using the dark brotherhood skill and not a normal heavy attack.
Apart from that the only way to remain stealthed when attacking is the shadowstrike champion passive in the shadow tree.

ArchMikem

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Unique animation sounds like you are using the dark brotherhood skill and not a normal heavy attack.

My character was doing this long before Dark Brotherhood was released. During the charge up for a heavy attack the right sword would flip around in hand to perform a stab instead of the usual swing. Maybe the attack animation was just changed by ZOS in a patch during the time I put my DK away to play my Templar.

Curragraigue

ArchMikem wrote: »

Curragraigue wrote: »

Factors that might affect stealth are racial passives and armour passives giving a wider area of not being detected. Some non-combat mobs can detect you which brings you out of stealth even though there are no combative mobs nearby.

Khajiit have racial passives that seems to be perfect for this like Stealthy and Carnage. Although does type of armor affect the outcome? I have a mix of 5pc Light and 2pc Heavy. I remember for a long time in the beginning I fitted the character with a mix of Light and Medium and never had a problem with stealth attacks.

Medium armour has a passive similar to the Khajiit and Bosmer passives re reducing detection area when in stealth. I just meant if you were in different gear or different races for your characters that may have affected why you were not stealth attacking the same way.

ArchMikem

Curragraigue wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Curragraigue wrote: »

Factors that might affect stealth are racial passives and armour passives giving a wider area of not being detected. Some non-combat mobs can detect you which brings you out of stealth even though there are no combative mobs nearby.

Khajiit have racial passives that seems to be perfect for this like Stealthy and Carnage. Although does type of armor affect the outcome? I have a mix of 5pc Light and 2pc Heavy. I remember for a long time in the beginning I fitted the character with a mix of Light and Medium and never had a problem with stealth attacks.

Medium armour has a passive similar to the Khajiit and Bosmer passives re reducing detection area when in stealth. I just meant if you were in different gear or different races for your characters that may have affected why you were not stealth attacking the same way.

I'll try replacing my two Heavy pieces with Medium and try that out. I did play the character extensively before with Medium armor since it's skill line is at 50. I just can't remember for sure if I was also able to do it with Heavy armor as well since it's been so long.

Update:

After doing some testing in a CP40 zone with Medium/Light armor, and then switching the Med back out with my Heavy pieces, ive concluded that armor type is irrelevant. What seems to be the deciding factor, (in my PoV anyway), is the difference between a mob's health pool, and the amount of dmg your hit puts out. The typical Necromancer mob is a very weak enemy, and everytime i performed a sneak attack on one, even when it was part of a group, i remained hidden after the attack. However, when attacking any other mob that had a larger health pool, even if i managed a successful sneak attack, it caused me to be detected, even when it was just the mob and myself in the immediate area.

Its no wonder then that back in the pre-vet levels i was pulling off hidden sneak attacks left and right, due to the fact i was levelling during the anniversary xp boost cake which was causing me to be at times a whole 6 or 7 levels ahead of the zone mobs i was encountering. The numbers difference was just too great. But now that im in the Champion zones, i can frankly say goodbye to my stealth days since my DK is not built for heavy physical damage.

Also, that special attack animation stuff ended up being crap. It really was just one of the normal heavy attack swings that i mistook at one point for something different and, yeah.

MrTarkanian48

ArchMikem wrote: »

Curragraigue wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Curragraigue wrote: »

Factors that might affect stealth are racial passives and armour passives giving a wider area of not being detected. Some non-combat mobs can detect you which brings you out of stealth even though there are no combative mobs nearby.

Khajiit have racial passives that seems to be perfect for this like Stealthy and Carnage. Although does type of armor affect the outcome? I have a mix of 5pc Light and 2pc Heavy. I remember for a long time in the beginning I fitted the character with a mix of Light and Medium and never had a problem with stealth attacks.

Medium armour has a passive similar to the Khajiit and Bosmer passives re reducing detection area when in stealth. I just meant if you were in different gear or different races for your characters that may have affected why you were not stealth attacking the same way.

I'll try replacing my two Heavy pieces with Medium and try that out. I did play the character extensively before with Medium armor since it's skill line is at 50. I just can't remember for sure if I was also able to do it with Heavy armor as well since it's been so long.

Update:

After doing some testing in a CP40 zone with Medium/Light armor, and then switching the Med back out with my Heavy pieces, ive concluded that armor type is irrelevant. What seems to be the deciding factor, (in my PoV anyway), is the difference between a mob's health pool, and the amount of dmg your hit puts out. The typical Necromancer mob is a very weak enemy, and everytime i performed a sneak attack on one, even when it was part of a group, i remained hidden after the attack. However, when attacking any other mob that had a larger health pool, even if i managed a successful sneak attack, it caused me to be detected, even when it was just the mob and myself in the immediate area.

Its no wonder then that back in the pre-vet levels i was pulling off hidden sneak attacks left and right, due to the fact i was levelling during the anniversary xp boost cake which was causing me to be at times a whole 6 or 7 levels ahead of the zone mobs i was encountering. The numbers difference was just too great. But now that im in the Champion zones, i can frankly say goodbye to my stealth days since my DK is not built for heavy physical damage.

Also, that special attack animation stuff ended up being crap. It really was just one of the normal heavy attack swings that i mistook at one point for something different and, yeah.

@ArchMikem After reading this post I have a couple observations:

1) You are a Magicka Build, but using Heavy Melee attacks correct?

From my understanding, sneak attacks are exclusive to physical damage attacks. This includes light/heavy attacks with melee weapons and bow, Surprise attack on nightblade, and weapon attacks like Wrecking Blow, Snipe, etc.

If you are on a Magplar and using Sweeps (magic ability), it will not get any sneak bonus. However, if you are simply doing a heavy melee attack it should be applied. This does not mean it will do extreme damage though on a mag build which speaks to the next point.

2) Assuming you are using Heavy Attacks from crouch stealth you will always have the initial sneak attack bonus applied. However, you only remain in stealth if you kill the target in one hit. If the target survives the initial hit, you will be exposed. Heavy attack damage on DW scales heavily with Weapon Damage and somewhat with Max Stamina. So on a mag build with low WD and low stam, your Heavy attacks with DW will not be very powerful.

When I was leveling ledgermain, there was an area where you could loot sheep and fence/launder the items, but in order to that without getting a bounty you had to one shot some nearby NPC's. On my khajiit stamblade I was able to one shot the npcs with wrecking blow from sneak, and not gain a bounty. I was not able to do this on my magblade though, since I could not get sufficient melee damage. This makes sense with your point that you were able to one shot weaker opponents, but not stronger opponents. It is unlikely that you will be able to do this at a high level on a magicka build.

3) I saw you went with DW precise daggers on a Mag build. One thing to take note of is that the DW Twin Blade and Blunt passive is weapon critical only. So you will not get 10% spell crit from daggers on this build. Also, sneak damage is calculated differently than normal crit damage. A sneak damage attack essentially always crits, so there is no need to have a high weapon critical on a mag build if you occasionally sneak attack. You could have 0% weapon crit, and still sneak crit 100% of the time. The only reason to have any weapon critical would be if you are running a hybrid build that also uses regular Heavy/Light attacks and weapon abilities.

On the other hand, DW swords gives a 5% flat damage increase to all damage, including magic/elemental. So you may want to look into using DW swords if you opt not to use a staff.

If you really want to excel at sneak damage, I would recommend using a stamina based Wood Elf or Khajiit NB.

ArchMikem

MrTarkanian48 wrote: »

@ArchMikem After reading this post I have a couple observations:

1) You are a Magicka Build, but using Heavy Melee attacks correct?

From my understanding, sneak attacks are exclusive to physical damage attacks. This includes light/heavy attacks with melee weapons and bow, Surprise attack on nightblade, and weapon attacks like Wrecking Blow, Snipe, etc.

If you are on a Magplar and using Sweeps (magic ability), it will not get any sneak bonus. However, if you are simply doing a heavy melee attack it should be applied. This does not mean it will do extreme damage though on a mag build which speaks to the next point.

This I already know. I've been doing this testing solely based on using Dual Swords and my weapon damage on my Magicka Dragonknight character. This same character had been a Dual Wield Magicka build the entire playthrough.

2) Assuming you are using Heavy Attacks from crouch stealth you will always have the initial sneak attack bonus applied. However, you only remain in stealth if you kill the target in one hit. If the target survives the initial hit, you will be exposed.

This makes sense with your point that you were able to one shot weaker opponents, but not stronger opponents. It is unlikely that you will be able to do this at a high level on a magicka build.

I stated that my character was still exposed even when I performed a successful one hit sneak attack. The difference was I remained hidden on weaker enemies while the the ones with larger health pools forced me out of being hidden, regardless if I managed a successful attack or not.

That made me conclude that the deciding factor for remaining hidden through a sneak attack is based on how much damage you're putting out in proportion to your target's health pool. Having just enough damage to get them in one hit isn't enough to keep you hidden.

If you really want to excel at sneak damage, I would recommend using a stamina based Wood Elf or Khajiit NB.

I actually swallowed my pride and made a Nightblade the other night...