Abilities which might need to be addressed aswell in the CwC Patch

fred4

I am tired of people asking for nerfs to skills that work. Does anyone ever notice there are loads of these? Granted there are also weak or unpopular skills, but given the plethora of strong skills, might the game actually be balanced?

I would survive more often, if the damn (Light's Champion) ultimate would actually activate, when needed, and not lag out. I have also been zerged down, by small groups, regardless of that ultimate. Yes, it's cheap, but it's still an ultimate and not available all the time. Despite the crit buff, it is not my ultimate of choice, as I typically need my DPS ultimate to kill people. This curtails it's uptime. I think ZOS have the healing ultimates about right. If anything, NB Soul Siphon needs a buff to bring it up to par with the Light's Champion and Healing Thicket.

Like you say, Soul Assault can be the end of a medium armor toon. I like the condition you have attached to that. It's a medium armor toon, who is low on stam. SA is strong specifically only against those, or against people who have not yet learned to counter it. A shielding build laughs at SA. A heavy armor build takes less damage. A 1H+S build blocks. A Harness Magicka user thanks the attacker for the extra magicka. An Absorb Magicka user heals back to full health from SA. I kid you not. I once attacked a sorc who did exactly that. I reckon he used a shield and Absorb Magicka. A very high DPS medium armor player is liable to counter-attack and kill you before the SA is even finished, and that's despite you putting up shields. SA often works, except against experienced players in a balanced fight it really doesn't work that well at all. It's a polarising ability only for the same reasons J-Beam is/was. The high visibility beam and the seeming arrogance of the attacker, who doesn't have to apply their skills for 4 seconds.

olsborg

Power extraction needs to be reworked completely to gain any use in pvp.

Make it a major brutality selfbuff (no aoe or hit requirement) and a HoT just like rally, but no burst at the end, just giving you minor vitality while under 50% health. Something to that effect.

BohnT

fred4 wrote: »

I am tired of people asking for nerfs to skills that work. Does anyone ever notice there are loads of these? Granted there are also weak or unpopular skills, but given the plethora of strong skills, might the game actually be balanced?

I would survive more often, if the damn (Light's Champion) ultimate would actually activate, when needed, and not lag out. I have also been zerged down, by small groups, regardless of that ultimate. Yes, it's cheap, but it's still an ultimate and not available all the time. Despite the crit buff, it is not my ultimate of choice, as I typically need my DPS ultimate to kill people. This curtails it's uptime. I think ZOS have the healing ultimates about right. If anything, NB Soul Siphon needs a buff to bring it up to par with the Light's Champion and Healing Thicket.

Like you say, Soul Assault can be the end of a medium armor toon. I like the condition you have attached to that. It's a medium armor toon, who is low on stam. SA is strong specifically only against those, or against people who have not yet learned to counter it. A shielding build laughs at SA. A heavy armor build takes less damage. A 1H+S build blocks. A Harness Magicka user thanks the attacker for the extra magicka. An Absorb Magicka user heals back to full health from SA. I kid you not. I once attacked a sorc who did exactly that. I reckon he used a shield and Absorb Magicka. A very high DPS medium armor player is liable to counter-attack and kill you before the SA is even finished, and that's despite you putting up shields. SA often works, except against experienced players in a balanced fight it really doesn't work that well at all. It's a polarising ability only for the same reasons J-Beam is/was. The high visibility beam and the seeming arrogance of the attacker, who doesn't have to apply their skills for 4 seconds.

Just because some skills are completely useless that doesn't mean that there should be skills which are completely overperforming.
The weak skills need to be buffed just like the op ones need to be nerfed. That is balance if every skill is not the same but has roughly the same value in usage.

pieratsos

fred4 wrote: »

I am tired of people asking for nerfs to skills that work. Does anyone ever notice there are loads of these? Granted there are also weak or unpopular skills, but given the plethora of strong skills, might the game actually be balanced?

I would survive more often, if the damn (Light's Champion) ultimate would actually activate, when needed, and not lag out. I have also been zerged down, by small groups, regardless of that ultimate. Yes, it's cheap, but it's still an ultimate and not available all the time. Despite the crit buff, it is not my ultimate of choice, as I typically need my DPS ultimate to kill people. This curtails it's uptime. I think ZOS have the healing ultimates about right. If anything, NB Soul Siphon needs a buff to bring it up to par with the Light's Champion and Healing Thicket.

Like you say, Soul Assault can be the end of a medium armor toon. I like the condition you have attached to that. It's a medium armor toon, who is low on stam. SA is strong specifically only against those, or against people who have not yet learned to counter it. A shielding build laughs at SA. A heavy armor build takes less damage. A 1H+S build blocks. A Harness Magicka user thanks the attacker for the extra magicka. An Absorb Magicka user heals back to full health from SA. I kid you not. I once attacked a sorc who did exactly that. I reckon he used a shield and Absorb Magicka. A very high DPS medium armor player is liable to counter-attack and kill you before the SA is even finished, and that's despite you putting up shields. SA often works, except against experienced players in a numbers-balanced fight it really doesn't work well at all. It's a polarising ability only for the same reasons J-Beam is/was. The high visibility beam and the seeming arrogance of the attacker, who doesn't have to apply their skills for 4 seconds.

You are tired of people asking for nerfs? We are tired of every potato getting carried by every stupid mechanic in this game.

Strong and broken are completely different. Counter and hard counter are also completely different.

SodanTok

fred4 wrote: »

I am tired of people asking for nerfs to skills that work. Does anyone ever notice there are loads of these? Granted there are also weak or unpopular skills, but given the plethora of strong skills, might the game actually be balanced?

I would survive more often, if the damn (Light's Champion) ultimate would actually activate, when needed, and not lag out. I have also been zerged down, by small groups, regardless of that ultimate. Yes, it's cheap, but it's still an ultimate and not available all the time. Despite the crit buff, it is not my ultimate of choice, as I typically need my DPS ultimate to kill people. This curtails it's uptime. I think ZOS have the healing ultimates about right. If anything, NB Soul Siphon needs a buff to bring it up to par with the Light's Champion and Healing Thicket.

Like you say, Soul Assault can be the end of a medium armor toon. I like the condition you have attached to that. It's a medium armor toon, who is low on stam. SA is strong specifically only against those, or against people who have not yet learned to counter it. A shielding build laughs at SA. A heavy armor build takes less damage. A 1H+S build blocks. A Harness Magicka user thanks the attacker for the extra magicka. An Absorb Magicka user heals back to full health from SA. I kid you not. I once attacked a sorc who did exactly that. I reckon he used a shield and Absorb Magicka. A very high DPS medium armor player is liable to counter-attack and kill you before the SA is even finished, and that's despite you putting up shields. SA often works, except against experienced players in a balanced fight it really doesn't work that well at all. It's a polarising ability only for the same reasons J-Beam is/was. The high visibility beam and the seeming arrogance of the attacker, who doesn't have to apply their skills for 4 seconds.

If medium armor toon can kill you during soul assault and not die, then you actually have to l2p a lot.
Also your post looks like people should learn to counter it by playing literally any other build than medium armor dodge roll build.

And sure, soul assault is not some instawin button. That does not meen it is alright. Because yet again, if you need just 100 ulti to reduce someone health to half and remove half their stamina and then you still lose the fight, it was again l2p on your side. Reason it does not work in balanced fights is because the enemy you are fighting (if he is medium armor dodge roll build) is much better and without this ulti you would probably stand no chance.

Second reason why soul assault does not look so effective is because you rarely actually meet medium armor build that is not nightblade and that was not forced to backbar 1H+S or stack resist/health to counter this (I know I did).
This ultimate and many other ZoS decisions almost removed the whole dodge roll playstyle from all classes but NB. Everybody is forced to at least have 18k resist and some 25k HP to fight. You literally melt if you have less.

BohnT

olsborg wrote: »

Power extraction needs to be reworked completely to gain any use in pvp.

Make it a major brutality selfbuff (no aoe or hit requirement) and a HoT just like rally, but no burst at the end, just giving you minor vitality while under 50% health. Something to that effect.

Yes PE needs a rework or just have it's damage buff compared to sap essence buffed. Right now with equal stats 30k stam/ 2.5k wpn dmg and 30k mag and 2.5k magdmg the tooltip of PE is 4 damage stronger than Sap Essence that's a joke.

I think a permanent major brut buff would be kinda useless because that would mean you have to double bar it to have major brutality all the time.

Maybe something like: increase damage by 25% and let it apply a dot that ticks every .2 seconds for .4 seconds so it isn't overwritten by the next PE but ofc it shouldn't be too strong (like lotus fan dot)

Solariken

Biro123 wrote: »

I kind of wonder if nerfing ulti-gain would be a solution..

I mean they nerfed stam/mag/health recov recently - but left ulti-gain. I think I'd rather see less-frequent ulti-use across the board.

I would support a minor reduction in ulti gain in an effort to make ultimates feel ultimate again. Before that though we absolutely need cost increases on resto/snb/soul strike/trees. I also want the variable damage mechanic back on Death Stroke - that used to be so bad ass and had a tactical element that doesn't exist anymore.

SanTii.92

You forgot to mention warden healing ulti.

Increase cost to 100, maybe 125. Rework Forest, we don't need both morphs to contribute with higher uptime. Should give some offensive buffs instead.

BohnT

SanTii.92 wrote: »

You forgot to mention warden healing ulti.

Healing thicket is the Warden ult

SanTii.92

BohnT wrote: »

SanTii.92 wrote: »

You forgot to mention warden healing ulti.

Healing thicket is the Warden ult

Right, only read your first post. How about you reformat into one, and add a couple bullet points (:

Anyways, 200 is ridiculous.

s7732425ub17_ESO

This post is valid.

BohnT

SanTii.92 wrote: »

BohnT wrote: »

SanTii.92 wrote: »

You forgot to mention warden healing ulti.

Healing thicket is the Warden ult

Right, only read your first post. How about you reformat into one, and add a couple bullet points (:

Anyways, 200 is ridiculous.

Done, seems that i can only change it on mobile version of the forum

SanTii.92

Nevermind

IAVITNI

On a mobile so too lazy to quote.

I agree that all the skills listed need to be addressed.

I disagree with how the sword and board and resto ulti should be changed. These are really the only tools available to solo players when they run into zergs. In which case I don't see a problem with 1 ultimate keeping you alive vs x players when an offensive ultimate can also kill x players. I wouldn't mind if you were unable to attack while these ultimate were up and in terms of uptime, someone spamming a defensive ulti shouldn't be able to kill anything but a potato.

I proposed in another post that the base durations be decreased to something like 2.5 seconds and increase by 1 second for every enemy that hits them. This provides counter play while reducing the overall effective uptime yet maintaining viability in all scenarios.

On the topic of soul assault, the skill basically guarantees a kill against a medium armor player unless they have a potion up. After getting hit by an offensive ultimate, a smart player will play defensively. However soul assault drains health and stamina meaning there's and resources to use defensively. If you really think a medium user can kill an enemy using soul assault than stop fighting potatoes. They can't close the gap easily and if you're not blocking your dead. If you can't LoS your either dead or low on health and stamina. It's a hard counter. Period.

I like the ops suggestion to change soul assault and I also support the suggestion to remove snare. The damage is fine imo, but it simply does too much for a low cost.

ak_pvp

Neoauspex wrote: »

Sorc: nerf shield breaker
Magplar: nerf defile
Stamblade: nerf soul assault
Paper: nerf scissors

Can we stop asking to nerf the exact thing meant to counter your build? Just play solitaire if you want to win no matter what.

I don't play NB. Soul strike is talentless BS that is a stupid XV1 nightmare.

Neoauspex

ak_pvp wrote: »

Neoauspex wrote: »

Sorc: nerf shield breaker
Magplar: nerf defile
Stamblade: nerf soul assault
Paper: nerf scissors

Can we stop asking to nerf the exact thing meant to counter your build? Just play solitaire if you want to win no matter what.

I don't play NB. Soul strike is talentless BS that is a stupid XV1 nightmare.

Every ultimate is a Xv1 nightmare. There's one that does the same damage as Soul Assault, except it's AoE. And instead of a channel, you can freely use other skills while it's active. It just follows you around. Every time I get hit by a soul assault I laugh joyously because I didn't get destro bombed, even if I die.

fred4

To everyone calling me a potato, I don't die from casting SA. I did a couple of times when I started using it, before I figured out that you can cancel it with block, if need be. I don't use it anymore, because of it's drawbacks.

For what it's worth, I agree that medium armor builds should probably have a better counter than blocking. But wait, they do! Some players counter it, because they routinely only fight in locations where they can LoS. Even the various fences, in IC, will break SA. Nightblades can, of course, cloak after 2 seconds. As a medium armor stam DK, I found it hard to deal with, but could cancel it with Corrosive Armor. Really any ulti will save a DK and counter-attack the Soul Assaulting player. Other than that it was a combination of block and Vigor. You had to watch your stamina fighting a Soul Assaulter. By the same token I now play a light armor build, and you have to stay near full health and/or shield against any opponent who has burst, not least sorcs with their nasty Implosion passive. It's really not that different. Some opponents you can let your resources run low against while others will punish you for it.

IAVITNI

fred4 wrote: »

To everyone calling me a potato, I don't die from casting SA. I did a couple of times when I started using it, before I figured out that you can cancel it with block, if need be. I don't use it anymore, because of it's drawbacks.

For what it's worth, I agree that medium armor builds should probably have a better counter than blocking. But wait, they do! Some players counter it, because they routinely only fight in locations where they can LoS. Even the various fences, in IC, will break SA. Nightblades can, of course, cloak after 2 seconds. As a medium armor stam DK, I found it hard to deal with, but could cancel it with Corrosive Armor. Really any ulti will save a DK and counter-attack the Soul Assaulting player. Other than that it was a combination of block and Vigor. You had to watch your stamina fighting a Soul Assaulter. By the same token I now play a light armor build, and you have to stay near full health and/or shield against any opponent who has burst, not least sorcs with their nasty Implosion passive. It's really not that different. Some opponents you can let your resources run low against while others will punish you for it.

Using LoS should not be the only real counter to a skill. Or are you saying medium armor users can only fight near terrain? Due to the 70% snare, unless you are literally right beside something to LoS, you're taking the full Soul Assault. In a duel SA is simply overpowered and a hard counter to medium builds. And I'm not saying the game should be balanced around duels. Obviously some kills will be stronger and some weaker within a duel context. However, no skill should be useless or overpowered in a duel context either.

The point isn't that you can survive Soul Assault. The issue is that even if you do survive you likely have close to 0 stamina and your health will also most likely be less than half on a medium build.

Most people don't think the damage is op. But name another skill that has a ~70k tooltip, basically drains all stamina, has a 70% snare and a low cost and can't be interrupted. Or to be more objective, name any other skill that hard counters all defensive options AND leaves you with an empty resource pool.

Nobody is saying Soul Assault shouldn't be a counter to stamina builds, especially ones that roll dodge/cloak. I don't normally die to Soul Assault 1v1 but if I don't have a potion up I am guaranteed to lose afterwards because it would have drained all my stamina spamming heals and blocking. If I get hit by a Dawnbreaker combo or any other ultimate->execute, I at least have the chance to heal up because I still have resource. Can't say the same for Soul Assault. Hard counters (i.e. counters to builds that can't be countered themselves) should not exist. LoS is not and should not be considered a legitimate "counter".

This is solely relative to medium armor. On my magicka sorc I like do a full rotation on the SA caster. I've only ever died twice 1v1 to a soul assault and that was against a high single target burst build that happened to SA me during streaks.

SodanTok

fred4 wrote: »

To everyone calling me a potato, I don't die from casting SA. I did a couple of times when I started using it, before I figured out that you can cancel it with block, if need be. I don't use it anymore, because of it's drawbacks.

For what it's worth, I agree that medium armor builds should probably have a better counter than blocking. But wait, they do! Some players counter it, because they routinely only fight in locations where they can LoS. Even the various fences, in IC, will break SA. Nightblades can, of course, cloak after 2 seconds. As a medium armor stam DK, I found it hard to deal with, but could cancel it with Corrosive Armor. Really any ulti will save a DK and counter-attack the Soul Assaulting player. Other than that it was a combination of block and Vigor. You had to watch your stamina fighting a Soul Assaulter. By the same token I now play a light armor build, and you have to stay near full health and/or shield against any opponent who has burst, not least sorcs with their nasty Implosion passive. It's really not that different. Some opponents you can let your resources run low against while others will punish you for it.

Hugging a tree is maybe valid strategy to avoid soul assault, but you wont do much killing from that position. I dont get how should one "watch his stamina" fighting soul assaulter. You fight, he uses it, you have 20k less. How do you watch it. You cant stop him doing it. He will do it again next 10sec. Even if you somehow casted absolutely nothing in tthat time you still regenerated less than you lost last time.
Before someone again comes with some smart response, yes you can win fights even with 3 soul assault used on you. Congratulations. You outplayed your opponent. Now try fighting someone smarter using it. You need to pass kindergarten to kill people with it, but they need diploma from university to survive and defeat you.

Now compare it to any other ult (well, except destro).

DDuke

smh when people state LOS as some kind of Soul Assault counter - you're snared by 70% and the whole thing is over before you get behind any obstacle

fred4

OK, you're starting to convince me that medium builds need a better way to counter SA. I'm not sure I agree with the proposed fixes. The one that appeals to me the most is bashing - something active you can do, but ZOS got rid of it. I wonder what their reasoning was? Are we only talking about bashing, or all skills that interrupt, such as Venom Arrow, Crushing Shock, Deep Breath? I guess ZOS felt those were too cheap counters for the attacking player to potentially waste their ulti. I don't believe the skill was widely used before the latest round of changes, was it?

Light Armor builds shield, Heavy Armor builds block, heal, or aren't too fussed. Medium builds traditionally dodge / roll. When you manage to do that, it's a hard counter that avoids an attack completely. I guess ZOS couldn't reconcile how that should work against a channeled one. Soul Assault was deemed too expensive to have dodging the whole ability as a hard counter.

I am only thinking out loud.

The snare is probably the nastiest thing about it, since it makes it very hard to simply run out of range. Hang on, could a stamsorc not just streak to do that? That's one more stamina class covered . A warden would probably just heal or garden their way out of it...

Again, just thinking out loud.

MLGProPlayer

The entire warden kit needs to be addressed. I'd like to be able to actually use my warden, that I paid $40 for, in PvE. Thanks.

fred4

DDuke wrote: »

smh when people state LOS as some kind of Soul Assault counter - you're snared by 70% and the whole thing is over before you get behind any obstacle

Then you don't have the mindset of some of the opponents I face in IC. Some - I assume the ones who 1vX a lot - always draw you into places where they can LoS with one dodge roll. They assume your buddies will show up any second. I guess I might not pursue, but really it's in my own interest to do the same. It's constantly around fences in Temple District, in and out of buildings, or from one floor to another. In that environment SA is not a really good skill.

DDuke

fred4 wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

smh when people state LOS as some kind of Soul Assault counter - you're snared by 70% and the whole thing is over before you get behind any obstacle

Then you don't have the mindset of some of the opponents I face in IC. Some - I assume the ones who 1vX a lot - always draw you into places where they can LoS with one dodge roll. They assume your buddies will show up any second. I guess I might not pursue, but really it's in my own interest to do the same. It's constantly around fences in Temple District, in and out of buildings, or from one floor to another. In that environment SA is not a really good skill.

Dodge roll animation takes 2 seconds - Soul Assault lasts 3,5 seconds. There's a good chance you're dead before that animation finishes if your opponents knows what he's doing.

To really LOS a Soul Assault before it kills you, you'd have to be just about to cut a corner (already on the move) when it gets cast, otherwise all you can do is block & hope your opponent doesn't know how to combo it with other ***.

Assuming your opponent has atleast a 100k tooltip on the ulti, a Soul Assault would deal around 18-19k dmg (and that's with 19% standard medium armor mitigation & 2k/second Vigor ticks taken into account) to you in 2 seconds if you don't block.

fred4

Well, I guess I'm going to put it back, so I can kill people like you .

Wait, 100k tooltip? Nope, I don't have that. I've seen those lofty numbers quoted before, but I'm NB. A templar who optimises everything for channeled attacks, maybe? Sticks Purifying Light on you first, then Radiant ... is that your combo?

You know I've actually tried to theorycraft such a build in the UESP build editor and, short of using something crazy, like vMA daggers, not done it yet. Point me to the build, because I think most people's SA does not hit anywhere near that hard. You are quoting an extreme damage build - regardless of whether they use SA, or not - who has probably sacrificed everything, including their own defense.

Izaki

Wait the hell happened to the OP its like 3 times the same thing lol

Other than that, I agree with the issues, but don't quite agree with the solutions.

And aside from ultimates, there are lots of things that need to be adressed (aka useless skills and moprhs).

DDuke

fred4 wrote: »

Well, I guess I'm going to put it back, so I can kill people, like you.

Well, we're a rare breed these days, us medium armor users. But good luck.

fred4 wrote: »

Wait, 100k tooltip? Nope, I don't have that. I've seen those lofty numbers quoted before, but I'm NB. A templar who optimises everything for channeled attacks, maybe? Sticks Purifying Light on you first, then Radiant ... is that your combo?

You know I've actually tried to theorycraft such a build in the UESP build editor and, short of using something crazy, like vMA daggers, not done it yet. Point me to the build, because I think most people's SA does not hit anywhere near that hard. You are quoting an extreme damage build - regardless of whether they use SA, or not - who has probably sacrificed everything, including their own defense.

Not so extreme, even the usual duel pet sorc gets to 90k with Shadowrend+Necropotence+Grace - trust me, that build is not sacrificing any defense.

I'm no magicka expert, but most builds that includes Alchemist (or Kena) should almost automatically be 100k+ with buffs.

BohnT

Izaki wrote: »

Wait the hell happened to the OP its like 3 times the same thing lol

Other than that, I agree with the issues, but don't quite agree with the solutions.

And aside from ultimates, there are lots of things that need to be adressed (aka useless skills and moprhs).

What do you mean with 3 times the same thing?

fred4

He means your first post has repeated paragraphs in it. At least for me too.

IAVITNI

fred4 wrote: »

Wait, 100k tooltip? Nope, I don't have that. I've seen those lofty numbers quoted before, but I'm NB. A templar who optimises everything for channeled attacks, maybe? Sticks Purifying Light on you first, then Radiant ... is that your combo?

100k tool tip is slightly exaggerated. But I know plenty of people who would compare dps based on soul assault damage and the average of what I heard was +70k which is still a disgusting amount of damage. I believe Duke was speaking in extremes to emphasis a point. A dueling build would more than likely have around a 100k tooltip. I'm a solo/small scale pvp main, as are most of the people i play with. So those builds with +70k tooltips do have considerable sustain and most if not all were 1vx builds.

That said, only a potato will use only Soul Assault to kill and only another potato will die to only a Soul Assault. If I'm on a sorc, it be stupid to not cast curse, fury and then SA. When I was learning how to duel my kill combo was clench>frag>soul assault and I would win against people who would otherwise wipe the floor with me and this was waaaaay before SA got buffed.

Again the main issue is the collective advantages of SA, not just the damage or just the snare.

And to counter your stam sorc comment, sorcs can still take damage while streaking, and a sorc in medium armor is likely to die from SA if they cast streak more than a second after they are hit by LoS and they live only if they reach a corner.

Source: I have 5 sorcs, all different specs