Why do people think magblade is bad?

fred4

OBJnoob wrote: »

@fred4 i read your posts I think we understand each other. I’m curious where would nb fall on a class tier list for you? One like yours? One like mine? A talented stam ganker?

Arrgh. Judging by tonight's performance my build is crap. Everyone is so tanky and yet still dangerous. Oakensoul, despite the obvious damage increase, may have simplified my build too much. I need Merciless and Crushing Weapon back to build burst. Or something. Much as I love Zoal, I may need to try Balorgh to make the most of Oakensoul's ult gen. Or I need to actually ditch Caluurion and build for very high crit to make the most of Major + Minor Force.

I've been farming gear and getting into PvE tanking since we got the curated item drops. I also only play about half the classes in the game and only ever CP Cyro and IC. My experience is too limited for a tier list. Taking out my magplar and my stam DK last patch, I thought they felt stronger than I remembered, but I couldn't rank them.

I also care too much about how my builds play to concern myself that much with their performance. Your build wouldn't be good for me, because I like speed, I like dodge rolls, and I like flat sustain over the situational sustain from heavy armor. I cannot inhabit my character otherwise. I loathe heavy armor. I don't like the lack of sprint speed compared to medium, the lack of damage, the lack of flat sustain, the lack of roll dodge cost reduction. Everything about that armor type sucks and feels off whenever I try it. Phew! Sorry about that.

Many bruiser builds that are objectively strong also have low or situational sustain, partially rely on heavy attacks, are slow and rely on luring targets into favorable surroundings, such as resource towers. Some players size you up and seem like tanky noobs. They build ultimate and (try to) burst you down when they've fooled you into thinking that's what they are. Maybe they know they're too tanky and that's the only way they'll get you.

I'm not that guy. I'm just saying every build has limitations. I make different compromises. I'm squishy, but I have high sustain, very high speed and reasonably high damage. On my other classes I'm in medium or light armor as well, because I'm fundamentally a dodge roller and not a blocker. I had that "aha" moment on my magplar ages ago. Building tanky didn't work for me in duels with my friend, who pushes me very hard, but wearing Eternal Vigor or, these days, Wretched Vitality and using the stamina rune worked much better. At the same time and perhaps paradocically, I prefer a 1H+S back bar to recover from the brink when necessary. Also just makes for such a great ult on magplar.

It's really hard judging builds objectively, judging what might work for other people, when you have these inherent biases. A mobility / dodge rolling build always feels better to me than anything else. I used Eternal Hunt on my magblade years ago and found that better - or just plain stam sustain tbh - than every other possible defense. I believe most people have such biases, which are rooted in their evolution within the game and have made it into their muscle memory. This accounts for tier lists sometimes having marked differences and being somewhat pointless even as I watch them for the entertainment value.

divnyi

OBJnoob wrote: »

Problem: tank meta.
Victim: stealth burst nightblade

Eh maybeh, but really it's not only about them. It's about any decent 2s burst comboes which involve stun. Especially if there is more than 1 opponent.

Saying that as someone who played ~27k range fighters a lot.

OBJnoob

Kinda funny @fred4 that you prefer the dodge rolling play style but you prefer 1h/s.

Well, thanks for the good discussion everyone. Anyone willing to share their magnb builds and what kind of success you’ve been having on them?

I bought a war maiden inferno staff the other day… seemed kinda funny to me, I have always associated war maiden with aoe, but using the Psijic spammable and of course the rest of my nb combo worked pretty well. Definitely one of the better versions of ‘my build’ but I gotta say when you’re in close range pvping that elemental weapon is very difficult to weave. It wants to cancel itself a lot.

Other than that… oh, neat story I think. So I’m doing a bg… it comes up deathmatch. Sweet, not my favorite, but don’t get many of them so I’m excited. Waiting on players so I’m checking what classes the other teams have. One team has 3 dks. The other one has 4. We’ve got… other stuff. Lol. So I’m prepared for the L and indeed an L it is, but your boy went 10-4, and there was one massive scrum where I came in with a soul tether and arguably killed two people… and there were 3 more hunched over, low health and stunned, seemingly unable to break free (probably desync poor dks ) and my team and I got all of them. Anyway it was a good game in the end… we lost, but it was like 380 to 400 to 500 or something.

fred4

OBJnoob wrote: »

Kinda funny @fred4 that you prefer the dodge rolling play style but you prefer 1h/s.

There are situations where you can't escape, but blocking while spamming a strong burst heal works. I learnt that from magplar.

Well, thanks for the good discussion everyone. Anyone willing to share their magnb builds and what kind of success you’ve been having on them?

This is the exact build as of right now:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=453632

Stats are with full Balorgh, Asylum and Continuous, so the upper end of what is possible. Squishy af, but fast enough for a driveby in an AvA and with enough damage to make opponents pause for defense in a duel, if you don't manage to outright gank them. In fact this is the first time in a long time that I feel I can duel someone on this character by virtue of hitting them hard enough that my squishiness matters less in that moment. Very difficult and not so much against DK, though. Their DOTs are a menace with the Cloak change (you now take damage in Cloak) and no healing other than the burst heal.

Other than that… oh, neat story I think. So I’m doing a bg… it comes up deathmatch. Sweet, not my favorite, but don’t get many of them so I’m excited. Waiting on players so I’m checking what classes the other teams have. One team has 3 dks. The other one has 4. We’ve got… other stuff. Lol. So I’m prepared for the L and indeed an L it is, but your boy went 10-4, and there was one massive scrum where I came in with a soul tether and arguably killed two people… and there were 3 more hunched over, low health and stunned, seemingly unable to break free (probably desync poor dks ) and my team and I got all of them. Anyway it was a good game in the end… we lost, but it was like 380 to 400 to 500 or something.

Awesome!

Metemsycosis

Asylum DW looks really really good on magblade @fred4 with or without oakensoul.

fred4

Metemsycosis wrote: »

Asylum DW looks really really good on magblade @fred4 with or without oakensoul.

Yep. I was going to run Whirlwind anyway, so I started looking things up. A speed build nets you the full 450 bonus rather easily and gaining speed as you're executing is perfect to keep up with your target and subsequently get away. The build "only" has up to +85% speed in combat without Asylum. I normally like to run Wild Hunt. The Asylum weapon fixes the deficit and pushes you to the speed cap.

People may say "I only need X amount of speed", but they wouldn't know what they're talking about when it comes to this build. When your main defense is damage avoidance and Cloak, and not Shadow Image, it matters that you are as fast or faster than your opponent. Since you can't predict who you will be up against, you need to be the fastest. Outside of combat that +20% from green CP plus RAT puts you at the speed cap in Cloak.

OBJnoob

Oooo, I’m jealous. That sounds so fun. Every time I tried anything like that though I’m so garbage at it. Worst “rogue” Xbox NA.

WacArnold

If your fighting experienced players they will dodge your combo. A perfect dodge roll will dodge both a soul harvest and bow in one roll. Plus the bow is clunky compared to other classes combos. Its slower to charge and slows down pressure because your la attacks can be dodged players can also block and heal way faster than a bow procs so again your preasure is weak and drawn out which gives enemys plenty of time to heal and reset. Your skills are a mix of range and melee. Skill bar is crammed. Just makes it a hard class to play.

Honestly if you could hit combos and bow was not so clunky the class would be 100 percent better.

For sure they need to make merciless a skill that you dont have to cast to start the 5 light attack bow proc, if anything just for quality of life.

OBJnoob

Thing is if I’m fighting experienced players they’ll probably just eat my combo and not die anyway cuz they, if resources allowed, never let their health get to that 50 or 60% danger zone in the first place. But I’m sure a more stealthy variety of magblade has more burst so that might not be relevant for them.

Thing is… and again, for newcomers, I’d like to say that the main topic of this thread is basically that “if magblade tanking is so bad, maybe try and more brawly approach instead, and you might find you actually fit nicely into the meta.” But again… I play in ravenwatch, and I’m on Xbox so I haven’t played high isle yet.

But back to the guy roll dodging my combo… probably way more of an issue if your build feels it semi-necessary to off opponents in two global cooldowns. Like if I’m dueling a warden and I happen to sidestep his sub assault is he going to then think it’s a trash skill?

OBJnoob

Didn’t mean tanking meant ganking. How do you edit posts?

Selot

Because magblade is the worst magicka class atm in both pve and pvp

OBJnoob

I don’t know much about pve but yes from what I hear that’s true. And if they want to buff magblade a little that’s fine and perhaps even necessary. I can think of two specs that, in pvp, massively outperform it. I’m sure I’ll be very happy with my character when it’s done because my experience with magblade in pvp, when played the way I’ve detailed, is that it’s comfortably above average.