Grim focus proc should benefit from the passive crit damage

React

On the PTS currentley, firing the spectral bow results in the crit damage granted by the stacks to drop off prior to the projectile landing - resulting in the proc itself not benefiting from the passive crit damage.

I think this is a pretty large oversight in the design, and ZOS should revisit the ability to make a small adjustment. Previously when the bow granted mitigation, it made sense for the bonus to drop upon firing - you were sacrificing passive mitigation for a short window to use your strongest burst ability. Personally I think crit damage is a MUCH more suitable passive for the stacks, and is a great change - however the bonus should be granted for a few seconds upon firing the bow to ensure that the burst ability benefits from the damage passive.

Firing the bow should grant the max crit modifier given by the stacks for 2-3 seconds (10%) as it's own unique buff. This synergizes well with the damage modifier given by incap/soul harvest, and allows for the burst ability to benefit from the damage passive. This would be totally appropriate from a pvp perspective, as the ult has a cast time and the bow has a minimum travel time resulting in plenty of available counterplay against the combo.

I really hope zos makes the right choice with this change. It's great to see the "assassin/burst" class get it's mitigation traded for much more suitable crit damage, now allow the burst ability to benefit from that as well.

Sanctum74

Great point, i hope they change it. It doesn’t make sense to have to build up your bow proc and crit stacks and then not even be able to use the crit stacks in your burst combo. Please change Zos.

kalunte

the spectral bow already hits superhard. if it was to be buffed by the stacks' bonus it's base dmg should be adjusted too (so that it crit for the same amount as before) and will loose some dmg if no crit.

nightblade only thoughts.

WrathOfInnos

Probably not meta, but I’m curious, if you weave an inferno heavy attack into a bow proc, do you get the 2 stacks (4% crit damage) before it lands?

Rianai

kalunte wrote: »

the spectral bow already hits superhard. if it was to be buffed by the stacks' bonus it's base dmg should be adjusted too (so that it crit for the same amount as before) and will loose some dmg if no crit.

nightblade only thoughts.

IF it hits ...

NB already have to give up 10% mitigation, which means it will be even harder to stay offensive and keep pressure up, so how is a nb supposed to kill an opponent if high (and still very avoidable) burst isn't an option either?

Any delayed burst skill + spammable is still the same if not higher burst within the same gcd with often less counterplay and/or higher frequency.

kalunte

i'm definatly against undodgeable/blockable mechanics and i understand very well how frustrating it is to miss but i'd rather have a fair game than another way of health desync mecanic.

health desync comes from TOO high dmg either with single target abilities (snipe, leap, spectral bow, incap, frags, PoTL, sweeps.. are the most common but scorch and blastbone can do the same if you're squishy) or procs (burning light being the most famous of them) and well aimed combos, but they are combos right?

id' rather have it to stack only up to 3times with 3/6/10% crit dmg/healing buff lasting for few sec after cast and deal less dmg than having some dumb "i win" button.

kalunte

as for other classes having some more powerfull abilities, well, it looks like everyone will get his nightblade feature at some point, both skills but also delays, castimes and so on. not that i'm happy with castimes but if everyone has them, well, it's ok.

Rianai

I have never ever been desynced by Assassin's Will. It is probably the skill with the most reliable audio and visual tell in the entire game, no matter how much else is going on, no matter the lag, no matter for how much dmg my enemy was built. Most other abilities you mentioned are also not prone to desync (Snipe and Leap being the inglorious exceptions). Desyncs have absolutely nothing do do with the amount of dmg something deals.
(Aside from this my AW was able to hit significantly higher in the past. Remember when NB had Minor Berserk and there was no 20% base crit resist? This was enabeling a lot more dmg than 10% extra crit would do nowadays).

Also garbage gameplay doesn't become more enjoyable if other's have to endure the same garbage (cast times, ...).

SHOW

Liam12548 wrote: »

On the PTS currentley, firing the spectral bow results in the crit damage granted by the stacks to drop off prior to the projectile landing - resulting in the proc itself not benefiting from the passive crit damage.

I think this is a pretty large oversight in the design, and ZOS should revisit the ability to make a small adjustment. Previously when the bow granted mitigation, it made sense for the bonus to drop upon firing - you were sacrificing passive mitigation for a short window to use your strongest burst ability. Personally I think crit damage is a MUCH more suitable passive for the stacks, and is a great change - however the bonus should be granted for a few seconds upon firing the bow to ensure that the burst ability benefits from the damage passive.

Firing the bow should grant the max crit modifier given by the stacks for 2-3 seconds (10%) as it's own unique buff. This synergizes well with the damage modifier given by incap/soul harvest, and allows for the burst ability to benefit from the damage passive. This would be totally appropriate from a pvp perspective, as the ult has a cast time and the bow has a minimum travel time resulting in plenty of available counterplay against the combo.

I really hope zos makes the right choice with this change. It's great to see the "assassin/burst" class get it's mitigation traded for much more suitable crit damage, now allow the burst ability to benefit from that as well.

OP, thank you for identifying this issue.

FangOfTheTwoMoons

Agreed 100%

I'll miss the mitigation but for the extra damage is a nice trade off.

Mayrael

It came to my mind yesterday and I was planning to check it, you should report it in skills and abilities. I'll make separate report after confirming it via in game report.

ItsJustHashtag

So y’all want to go back to 15-20k bow procs? Is that what I’m gathering?

kalunte

Rianai wrote: »

Desyncs have absolutely nothing do do with the amount of dmg something deals.

@Rianai not geting desync'd by a skill doesnt mean this skill cant desync.

i'd like you to tell me where does desync comes if not from too high dmg in not enough time as it looks like you invested soo much time and effort to search where it comes from.

Rianai wrote: »

Also garbage gameplay doesn't become more enjoyable if other's have to endure the same garbage (cast times, ...).

totally agree with this, i'd rather have cast time removed from everything (even snipe with a dmg reduction alongside obviously ^^) rather than cast times everywhere but well, as they are going to last i'd rather have it everywhere than just on nb skills.

Red_Feather

ItsJustHashtag wrote: »

So y’all want to go back to 15-20k bow procs? Is that what I’m gathering?

But you can more easily dodge it compared to back then.

Rianai

kalunte wrote: »

Rianai wrote: »

Desyncs have absolutely nothing do do with the amount of dmg something deals.

@Rianai not geting desync'd by a skill doesnt mean this skill cant desync.

i'd like you to tell me where does desync comes if not from too high dmg in not enough time as it looks like you invested soo much time and effort to search where it comes from.

There are probably a million different reasons, why something desyncs but dmg dealt is certainly not one of them, which can be easily proven by the fact that low dmg can desync (i've had tanks desync me with 2k snipes), while high dmg does not automatically desync (i've got hit for 10k+ from different skills plenty of time without any desyncs whatsoever).

And it is pretty funny how you are defending procs that are enabeling absolutely ridiculous levels of dmg with little to zero effort from the users side and little to no counterplay for the target, while a little bit more dmg on a skill that has to be build up and then can be easily avoided is somehow a problem because of completely unrelated desyncs and because you don't want an some dumb "i win" button. Your words. But i guess some dumb "i win" sets are fine, it is only the button pressing that is somehow an issue for you.

Langeston

kalunte wrote: »

i'm definatly against undodgeable/blockable mechanics and i understand very well how frustrating it is to miss but i'd rather have a fair game than another way of health desync mecanic.

health desync comes from TOO high dmg either with single target abilities (snipe, leap, spectral bow, incap, frags, PoTL, sweeps.. are the most common but scorch and blastbone can do the same if you're squishy) or procs (burning light being the most famous of them) and well aimed combos, but they are combos right?

id' rather have it to stack only up to 3times with 3/6/10% crit dmg/healing buff lasting for few sec after cast and deal less dmg than having some dumb "i win" button.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that this is not even close to being correct. The only reason you may feel that high damage abilities are more prone to desync is because you notice/remember those big ticket items in your death recap. If a 2k ability desyncs 3 or 4 times, you may not even die — so unless you're closely monitoring the damage done to you you'd never know your health got desynced in the first place.

I don't claim to know the inner workings of server desync, but if I had to guess I'd say that it's due to the effects of latency on abilities with cast times/long travel times. If you look at your list of abilities that you notice the desyncs from, most of them have one or both.

Seeing as high damage abilities are usually the ones saddled with cast times/longer travel times, I suppose in a roundabout way they do tend to correlate with desyncs — but the amount of damage they do is not the cause of the desync.

kalunte

Rianai wrote: »

And it is pretty funny how you are defending procs that are enabeling absolutely ridiculous levels of dmg with little to zero effort from the users side and little to no counterplay for the target, while a little bit more dmg on a skill that has to be build up and then can be easily avoided is somehow a problem

well, i did not noticed that left clicking was so teddious for some of us.. sorry for that.
As for being easily avoidable.. talking of caluurion it's a huge lol for you, you have the animation + .9 sec (before but droped to .75 sec) + the travel time to dodge it + you will know that it will ALWAYS proc on the first dmg you take. what's more avoidable than that? seriously?

and yes, i've made my way through desync, watched plenty of my own videos, comparing combat texts, different user interfaces with addons and without, different floating combat text, different opponent and so on over more than a year. this does not mean i'm correct but well, i said "too many dmg in not enough time". maybe the calculation reduction with 100% chance procsets and removal of so proc rng to stacking mecanisms (burning light) will solve some issues and we'll have other things to complain by that time (some i've already complained about tho )

@Langeston i'd like to watch that video of geting desync by a 2k skill.

Atherakhia

I'm one of those who find the stacking counter intuitive and tedious. It's honestly the main reason I don't play the NB much anymore. I wish it would stack on crits or light/heavy attack and just have a built in limiter to 1 stack trigger every .5 seconds.

MurderMostFoul

Yeah, just give the final bow shot skill a built in bonus equal to the bonus from the stack.

Nemesis7884

that seems like an unintended bug no? good for mentioning it

Rianai

kalunte wrote: »

Rianai wrote: »

And it is pretty funny how you are defending procs that are enabeling absolutely ridiculous levels of dmg with little to zero effort from the users side and little to no counterplay for the target, while a little bit more dmg on a skill that has to be build up and then can be easily avoided is somehow a problem

well, i did not noticed that left clicking was so teddious for some of us.. sorry for that.
As for being easily avoidable.. talking of caluurion it's a huge lol for you, you have the animation + .9 sec (before but droped to .75 sec) + the travel time to dodge it + you will know that it will ALWAYS proc on the first dmg you take. what's more avoidable than that? seriously?

On an Incap (or other cc) into Bow combo, Calu will hit before the Bow. Since it is off gcd the user can guarantee it with cc, something that is not possible with AW. And i can not know it is going to proc on the first dmg i take since there is no way to tell what gear the enemy is wearing, before it actually procs. And the user can use addons to display the cd and easily time his cc/burst arround the proc, while the target has to estimate the timer. AW is also usless for ganker, since it has to be build up, Calu does require nothing but to press a single button once in a while.
Also stam is limited, especially for mag builds in noCP, so simply having something that basically forces another dodge, is a huge benefit in itself.

Finedaible

I'm hoping this oversight gets fixed because overall I kinda like the changes to Nightblade. It is the first glimmer of hope for the class in over a year.

On a related note, I'm still not sure what to think of the change to Master Assassin. In PvE it will probably be great for DPS, but in PvP you could get screwed over bad from lag and de-sync with this new passive. It might be better if cloak actually worked but there's really not much reason to slot cloak now, especially since the other passives it can activate are only great on a tank and with this rework you won't be getting a power bonus at all coming out of cloak if the server decides you aren't flanking the opponent. It may as well be an RNG proc in PvP if that is the case. Not to mention the new passive won't boost healing anymore either since it only applies to "your damaging attacks against enemies you are flanking".