Pirate Skeleton 1% nerfed enough?

NightbladeMechanics

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Removing 1% from a 6% chance is a 17% nerf (5 is 17% lower than 6). So the set will proc 17% less often than it did before - that should be sufficient as far as nerfs go.

The debuff should be unpurgable, without question.

However the reasoning that this set should give major maim because it was designed for tanks (and nothing but tanks) is wrong. It was designed more for tanks, not just for them, and ZOS still expects players who do not get hit often to use it - they specifically changed it to "limit the uptime it has for players who aren’t being hit very frequently", not remove the uptime by making the set unusable for them.

Understanding how this game's rng system works, this nerf just means the set will take another instance of damage or two to proc. It will still proc at approximately the same time and frequency, and its duration is unchanged.

The proc is 17% less likely to happen. Whether that can be considered "approximately the same" is subjective. Personally, i think a 17% difference is significant. It might take only another instance or two of damage to happen, but that instance might be the difference between surviving and dying.

Anything's technically possible in a hypothetical. I still don't think a 1% reduction in its proc chance will change the practical impact of the set in PvP, but oh well.

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

It being designed "more" for tanks would just suggest going with minor maim instead of major.

Do you really believe any player who intends to do damage would wear this set if it constantly decreased his damage by 15%? Attaching any kind of maim would mean it would only ever be used by tanks.

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

Sharee

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

Just imagine trying to kill a templar healer standing in his ritual of retribution and healing his team while nobody is actively attacking you. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Using a set that randomly trades damage for protection on a damage-oriented build would be counter-productive. You do not always need the protection, but you do always need the damage.

NightbladeMechanics

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

The name of the game is "stacking". Either you stack for survivability, or you stack for damage. Go a hybrid route, and you won't outlast the damage stackers, and you won't outdamage the healing of the survivability stackers. For this reason, using a set that debuffs your damage on a damage-stacking build would be counter-productive.

The fact that you can get this debuff from other sources does not mean debuffing yourself on top of that is a good idea. Just imagine trying to kill a templar healer standing in his ritual of retribution and healing his team while nobody is actively attacking you. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

If nobody is actively attacking you, then Pirate with it's tiny 5-6% proc chance wouldn't proc, and you'd be attacking said templar at full strength.

And stacking all of your build into damage or survivability is not the nature of the game and never has been. That's a side effect of imbalance.

Sharee

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

The name of the game is "stacking". Either you stack for survivability, or you stack for damage. Go a hybrid route, and you won't outlast the damage stackers, and you won't outdamage the healing of the survivability stackers. For this reason, using a set that debuffs your damage on a damage-stacking build would be counter-productive.

The fact that you can get this debuff from other sources does not mean debuffing yourself on top of that is a good idea. Just imagine trying to kill a templar healer standing in his ritual of retribution and healing his team while nobody is actively attacking you. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

If nobody is actively attacking you, then Pirate with it's tiny 5-6% proc chance wouldn't proc, and you'd be attacking said templar at full strength.

You are constantly taking hundreds of tiny damage numbers in active pvp which are not threatening to you in any way. Running over caltrops. The said templar's retribution. A DK's damage returning armor. AOE proc from an attack aimed at someone else. A myriad of dots of various types. A guard aggroed on you. The pirate's proc chance may not be huge, but the duration is. You would find yourself debuffed a lot of the time, for no good reason.

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

And stacking all of your build into damage or survivability is not the nature of the game and never has been. That's a side effect of imbalance.

Side effect or not - that's how things currently are.

NightbladeMechanics

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

The name of the game is "stacking". Either you stack for survivability, or you stack for damage. Go a hybrid route, and you won't outlast the damage stackers, and you won't outdamage the healing of the survivability stackers. For this reason, using a set that debuffs your damage on a damage-stacking build would be counter-productive.

The fact that you can get this debuff from other sources does not mean debuffing yourself on top of that is a good idea. Just imagine trying to kill a templar healer standing in his ritual of retribution and healing his team while nobody is actively attacking you. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

If nobody is actively attacking you, then Pirate with it's tiny 5-6% proc chance wouldn't proc, and you'd be attacking said templar at full strength.

You are constantly taking hundreds of tiny damage numbers in active pvp which are not threatening to you in any way. Running over caltrops. The said templar's retribution. A DK's damage returning armor. AOE proc from an attack aimed at someone else. A myriad of dots of various types. A guard aggroed on you. The pirate's proc chance may not be huge, but the duration is. You would find yourself debuffed a lot of the time, for no good reason.

Tell me more about how that 1% nerf is significant again.

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

And stacking all of your build into damage or survivability is not the nature of the game and never has been. That's a side effect of imbalance.

Side effect or not - that's how things currently are for stam sorc, stam dk, and stamplar.

Fixed that for you. The other classes can by no means can stack all into damage and function in PvP, aside from gankers and bombers, but I don't count them since they aren't building for other players to fight back.

Dyride

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

The set needs a shorter duration once active. And not apply to shields.

It's op on everything, not just shields. No need to single them out and talk about fundamentally changing core game mechanics.

Dyride wrote: »

Right now you can have 12/15 (80%) uptime on Skeleton form, which is to high. They should have kept the proc chance at 6% but reduced the active time to 8 secs with a 12 sec cooldown.

I do like the idea of adding Minor Maim.

8/20 is a wide gap, but I could see that still being strong. It's 40% uptime on the strongest defensive buff in the game. The proc chance would have to be higher so that the proc could be predictable once the cooldown ends. That way the player wearing Pirate could play around his defensive window strategically.

I would be curious to see if/how people's behavior changed if the live version was made to apply minor maim in addition to defile. Damage is so crazy right now that I honestly wouldn't expect many people to drop the set, like healing and the minor defile. You don't even notice it when it's on you. Just me speculating though.

I wonder if all the changes coming next patch will make the defile debuff significant. I haven't used Pirate on PTS to see.

My suggestion would be 66% maximum uptime since the cooldown starts from when the proc occurs. Currently the proc cooldown is 15 secs with a 12 sec duration.

Coincidentally, this is also a ~17% nerf.

This set will still be very strong for solo/outnumbered play but medium/large groups won't use it since they will have Wardens for Major Protection.

In aggregate, the maximum Heal Debuff is not as strong on the PTS despite how they changed Befoul. This is because Fasalles is now Minor Defile.

The CP change did buff Major Defile somewhat if heavily specced into Befoul.

In my opinion, the sustain changes also indirectly boost the effectiveness of debuffs.

Sharee

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

The name of the game is "stacking". Either you stack for survivability, or you stack for damage. Go a hybrid route, and you won't outlast the damage stackers, and you won't outdamage the healing of the survivability stackers. For this reason, using a set that debuffs your damage on a damage-stacking build would be counter-productive.

The fact that you can get this debuff from other sources does not mean debuffing yourself on top of that is a good idea. Just imagine trying to kill a templar healer standing in his ritual of retribution and healing his team while nobody is actively attacking you. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

If nobody is actively attacking you, then Pirate with it's tiny 5-6% proc chance wouldn't proc, and you'd be attacking said templar at full strength.

You are constantly taking hundreds of tiny damage numbers in active pvp which are not threatening to you in any way. Running over caltrops. The said templar's retribution. A DK's damage returning armor. AOE proc from an attack aimed at someone else. A myriad of dots of various types. A guard aggroed on you. The pirate's proc chance may not be huge, but the duration is. You would find yourself debuffed a lot of the time, for no good reason.

Tell me more about how that 1% nerf is significant again.

That 1% nerf actually means the set will proc 17% less than it currently does. "17% less" is a significant change, in my humble opinion.

Or in other words, if the proc chance was changed from 2% to 1%, technically it would still be "only 1% nerf", but nobody would think it insignificant.

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

And stacking all of your build into damage or survivability is not the nature of the game and never has been. That's a side effect of imbalance.

Side effect or not - that's how things currently are for stam sorc, stam dk, and stamplar.

Fixed that for you. The other classes can by no means can stack all into damage and function in PvP, aside from gankers and bombers, but I don't count them since they aren't building for other players to fight back.

You did not fix anything, you presented a personal opinion, one that i happen to disagree with. As it is, i am playing a magicka DK in general PvP that is stacking everything into damage, and i do reasonably well, TYVM.

NightbladeMechanics

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Dealing 15% less damage in return for taking 30% less damage is a tradeoff that some people would make, yes, and killing people while afflicted with minor maim is nothing out of the ordinary. If you've ever fought against frost damage or shade or fear, you've done it.

The name of the game is "stacking". Either you stack for survivability, or you stack for damage. Go a hybrid route, and you won't outlast the damage stackers, and you won't outdamage the healing of the survivability stackers. For this reason, using a set that debuffs your damage on a damage-stacking build would be counter-productive.

The fact that you can get this debuff from other sources does not mean debuffing yourself on top of that is a good idea. Just imagine trying to kill a templar healer standing in his ritual of retribution and healing his team while nobody is actively attacking you. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

If nobody is actively attacking you, then Pirate with it's tiny 5-6% proc chance wouldn't proc, and you'd be attacking said templar at full strength.

You are constantly taking hundreds of tiny damage numbers in active pvp which are not threatening to you in any way. Running over caltrops. The said templar's retribution. A DK's damage returning armor. AOE proc from an attack aimed at someone else. A myriad of dots of various types. A guard aggroed on you. The pirate's proc chance may not be huge, but the duration is. You would find yourself debuffed a lot of the time, for no good reason.

Tell me more about how that 1% nerf is significant again.

That 1% nerf actually means the set will proc 17% less than it currently does. "17% less" is a significant change, in my humble opinion.

Or in other words, if the proc chance was changed from 2% to 1%, technically it would still be "only 1% nerf", but nobody would think it insignificant.

No, it means the set will proc 17% slower than it currently does. That 17% is a rate of change -- a percentage of a percentage. You can't treat it like a flat proc rate change. And under this game's random distribution rng system, 17% slower amounts to fractions of a second in group fights. It only becomes significant in small engagements with very few instances of damage, like 1v1s.

Changing a 2% proc rate to 1% is halving it. That's not a 17% change in the percentage. They can't be compared. A proper comparison would be changing a 2% proc rate to a 1.74% proc rate.

Sharee wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

And stacking all of your build into damage or survivability is not the nature of the game and never has been. That's a side effect of imbalance.

Side effect or not - that's how things currently are for stam sorc, stam dk, and stamplar.

Fixed that for you. The other classes can by no means can stack all into damage and function in PvP, aside from gankers and bombers, but I don't count them since they aren't building for other players to fight back.

You did not fix anything, you presented a personal opinion, one that i happen to disagree with. As it is, i am playing a magicka DK in general PvP that is stacking everything into damage, and i do reasonably well, TYVM.

Well you disagree with the majority of the community on this one. Magicka DK happens to manage building 100% into damage better than the other magicka classes, but it still struggles compared to the big three stam classes right now. I'd also be curious to know what you consider to be "doing reasonably well" compared to how a stamplar, stam DK, or stam sorc would perform in the same situations. (Edit: I'll also add that dual wield sorc sustains really well when stacking 100% into magicka, but they too have even more limitations than mDK.)

The fact still stands that through the course of this game's history, stacking 100% into either damage or survivability has not been the nature of the game for the majority of classes. That is the build pattern of gankers and overpowered classes propped up by heavy armor and CP. ZOS even stated that this game is originally about resource management and sustain in the Morrowind patch notes, which are all about reverting the power creep of the last year.

Avran_Sylt

Wait, Major Protection is applied to shields? seriously, just make it so that Major Protection doesn't reduce shield damage, just like how shields cannot be crit. Make shields at all times take full damage (since shield stacking is a thing).

sly007

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Wait, Major Protection is applied to shields? seriously, just make it so that Major Protection doesn't reduce shield damage, just like how shields cannot be crit. Make shields at all times take full damage (since shield stacking is a thing).

Yes, it does. It's bizarre that it does

NightbladeMechanics

sly007 wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Wait, Major Protection is applied to shields? seriously, just make it so that Major Protection doesn't reduce shield damage, just like how shields cannot be crit. Make shields at all times take full damage (since shield stacking is a thing).

Yes, it does. It's bizarre that it does

Wtf how is that bizarre? Major protection reduces damage taken across the board. Does casting shields to absorb damage not count as damage taken anymore?

The only bizarre things here are ZOS making a buff as strong as major protection available with the uptime of Pirate Skeleton, and people's inability to see past sorcs when ***ing about it.

sly007

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

sly007 wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Wait, Major Protection is applied to shields? seriously, just make it so that Major Protection doesn't reduce shield damage, just like how shields cannot be crit. Make shields at all times take full damage (since shield stacking is a thing).

Yes, it does. It's bizarre that it does

Wtf how is that bizarre? Major protection reduces damage taken across the board. Does casting shields to absorb damage not count as damage taken anymore?

The only bizarre things here are ZOS making a buff as strong as major protection available with the uptime of Pirate Skeleton, and people's inability to see past sorcs when ***ing about it.

It's bizarre because although major and minor protection do reduce incoming damage, shields were designed with zero defence but unable to be critical striked. Major and minor protection affecting shield gives shield defence while being unable to critical strike. It defeats the purpose of making shields unable to be critical striked because they are capable of having defence via damage reduction buffs.

NightbladeMechanics

sly007 wrote: »

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

sly007 wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Wait, Major Protection is applied to shields? seriously, just make it so that Major Protection doesn't reduce shield damage, just like how shields cannot be crit. Make shields at all times take full damage (since shield stacking is a thing).

Yes, it does. It's bizarre that it does

Wtf how is that bizarre? Major protection reduces damage taken across the board. Does casting shields to absorb damage not count as damage taken anymore?

The only bizarre things here are ZOS making a buff as strong as major protection available with the uptime of Pirate Skeleton, and people's inability to see past sorcs when ***ing about it.

It's bizarre because although major and minor protection do reduce incoming damage, shields were designed with zero defence but unable to be critical striked. Major and minor protection affecting shield gives shield defence while being unable to critical strike. It defeats the purpose of making shields unable to be critical striked because they are capable of having defence via damage reduction buffs.

Inability to be critically struck and ability to exceed your max health amount are the defensive mechanics of shields. Lack of resistances and high costs are the counterbalance.

As long as damage to shields counts as damage taken by you, protection buffs must mitigate that damage. This is because vulnerability buffs increase damage you take, including to your shields. These buffs are mirrors to each other. To make one affect shields no longer is to create imbalance.

The wrench in the system is that Pirate makes major protection widely available while vulnerability buffs are not. Pirate is the problem, not the buffs or shields themselves.

Sharee

NightbladeMechanics wrote: »

No, it means the set will proc 17% slower than it currently does. That 17% is a rate of change -- a percentage of a percentage. You can't treat it like a flat proc rate change. And under this game's random distribution rng system, 17% slower amounts to fractions of a second in group fights. It only becomes significant in small engagements with very few instances of damage, like 1v1s.

Changing a 2% proc rate to 1% is halving it. That's not a 17% change in the percentage. They can't be compared. A proper comparison would be changing a 2% proc rate to a 1.74% proc rate.

First, let's agree on something, so we don't get caught arguing definitions: if something had X chance to proc before, and it only has X/2 chance to proc now, then that's a 50% proc rate change. Yes? Okay.

Reducing set proc chance from 2%(our X) to 1%(our X/2) is halving it, that's correct. What does that mean in practice? It means that you will see half the procs per minute than you saw before. That is a 50% decrease in procs per minute, (because 1 is 50% less than 2) or in other words, a 50% proc rate change.

In the same manner, reducing set proc chance from 6% to 5% means a 17% decrease in procs per minute, (because 5 is 17% less than 6), or in other words, a 17% proc rate change.