A Concealed Weapon nerf not written in the patch note. Unintentional or intentional?

Lykeion

I noticed in this week's PTS that standing in Path of Darkness no longer triggers the Concealed weapon buff as it does in the live server. After testing, on the PTS it requires you to actually lose Major Expedition to get the buff. Concealed Weapon becomes extremely difficult to use. You need to keep a close watch on it and complex operations to have a decent uptime, and when there is another NB on your team, monitoring (and triggering) this buff is almost impossible.

I checked both patch notes but didn't find any changes related to this. Please remind me if I missed it. This is a very heavy nerf for magblade, which loses 10% damage when other classes get 10% damage for free in U37. Could dev please clarify if this change is intentional?

Edit: This problem was not reproduced in this week's PTS, and the problem should have been solved

Billium813

Lykeion wrote: »

I noticed in this week's PTS that standing in Path of Darkness no longer triggers the Concealed weapon buff as it does in the live server. After testing, on the PTS it requires you to actually lose Major Expedition to get the buff. Concealed Weapon becomes extremely difficult to use.

• Concealed Weapon
  • Slash an enemy, dealing 2323 Magic Damage. If you strike an enemy from their flank you set them Off Balance. When you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Major Expedition ends while in combat, your damage done is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. While slotted, you gain Minor Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%.

It seems to me like your PTS testing is how it's supposed to work, right? You gain the damage done increase by 10% when Major Expedition ends, rather than simple standing in Path of Darkness and gaining Major Expedition?

I don't play NB, so I can't speak to how detrimental this change is to NB. Perhaps it was a bug fix that was missed in the notes?

Lykeion

Billium813 wrote: »

I don't play NB, so I can't speak to how detrimental this change is to NB. Perhaps it was a bug fix that was missed in the notes?

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

...Here is a simple riddle to describe our favorite new interaction with it: “If your path is fraught with darkness, all shall be illuminated.”

This is a comment in patch note 8.1.4 with changes to Concealed Weapon. As far as I understand it, dev do want 'your path is fraught with darkness'

colossalvoids

@ZOS_Kevin hey, a bit of clarification needed for an issue if possible.

SteamKitten01

I haven't tested this myself as I haven't done any parsing and haven't looked at logs when running the new dungeons but if this is true, blades, which are currently solidly middle of the pack with regards to damage in PvE would become bottom tier overnight. It's already difficult to compete with the DK meta and this 10% damage loss would just push blades into irrelevance for anything other than healers.

Vevvev

Yeah, sounds like they fixed the bug and now it's working as intended based on the 8.1.4 patch notes. They fixed a few other 'bugs' as well like being able to be in a sprinting state while blocking which people like myself used to get into Vampire's Stage 4 Sprint invisibility while under fire.

acastanza_ESO

Concealed weapon should never have gotten a unique, unnamed 10% damage buff in the first place. It would have been less egregious if it was a named buff instead.

That said, ZOS did very much imply that the Path of Darkness interaction was intended (or at least recognized) but from the plain language of the skill that is not how it should have worked and the nerf is justified (and actually IMO does not go far enough)

Billium813

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Concealed weapon should never have gotten a unique, unnamed 10% damage buff in the first place. It would have been less egregious if it was a named buff instead.

That said, ZOS did very much imply that the Path of Darkness interaction was intended (or at least recognized) but from the plain language of the skill that is not how it should have worked and the nerf is justified (and actually IMO does not go far enough)

I will agree on 1 thing: ZOS needs to be much more careful on un-named buffs. The community has a really hard time validating them as working or not because there is no detectable buff/debuff.

ApoAlaia

I mean it irks me a bit but looks like if the buff does not refresh when path is recast but rather when major expedition expires then the buff is now working as expected and before it was an unintended behaviour.

I haven't played NB much in organised group content since U35 hit us, in fact U35 very much killed my appetite for progression altogether, but I was under the impression that this is how the buff worked.

I guess I have been getting an unintended 10% buff here and there and now I no longer will.

Still nowhere near the butchery they subjected my templars to.

The_Titan_Tim

Don’t worry, in trials, outside of Asylum, groups are already running only one Nightblade as Dragonknight and Necromancer are dominating the damage scene, you won’t have to worry about stepping in anyone else’s path so just keep cycling in and out of your’s, you just need better foot work now putting that unearned 15% extra movement speed to use.

From the ability text, it’s working as intended, as the ability technically never falls off, it’s got 100% up-time within the carpet while it’s constantly refreshing.

Kolzki

I don't see the same issue as the OP, at least in a quick overland test. I found that path is refreshing the buff while standing in it. There were just a few things to be sure of:

• Being in combat.
• Sometimes the character does not register as standing in the path on casting. This happens when the path effect appears a tiny distance in front of the caster. This happens on live too.
• Other major expedition sources with durations over 4 seconds will block path from procing concealed weapon.

Here's up time from path in overland trash (not proccing at first because of the second point above).

React

Lykeion wrote: »

I noticed in this week's PTS that standing in Path of Darkness no longer triggers the Concealed weapon buff as it does in the live server. After testing, on the PTS it requires you to actually lose Major Expedition to get the buff. Concealed Weapon becomes extremely difficult to use. You need to keep a close watch on it and complex operations to have a decent uptime, and when there is another NB on your team, monitoring (and triggering) this buff is almost impossible.

I checked both patch notes but didn't find any changes related to this. Please remind me if I missed it. This is a very heavy nerf for magblade, which loses 10% damage when other classes get 10% damage for free in U37. Could dev please clarify if this change is intentional?

Did you test it while in combat? I haven't signed on to this week's pts, but during week one I did some duels and it definitely was working the same way it does on live.

Kolzki

I've just seen a couple of pts dummy parses with near 100% concealed weapon up time.

Tannus15

each tick of path refreshes major expedition which refreshes the concealed weapon buff.
the wording on it was always dodgy if you ask me, but that's how it has always worked.

Billium813

• Path of Darkness
  • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.

• Concealed Weapon
  • Slash an enemy, dealing 2323 Magic Damage. If you strike an enemy from their flank you set them Off Balance. When you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Major Expedition ends while in combat, your damage done is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. While slotted, you gain Minor Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%.

---

What am I missing here, this is unintended behavior and a bug, right?

You lay down a Path of Darkness, gain Major Expedition (is it gain for 10 seconds? or gain while standing in the path?). I assume they intend it to be "while standing in the corridor"...

So, if you are meant to constantly have Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

It seems to me, from my laymen perspective, that there are two issues here:

1. ZOS needs to clean up the wording of Path of Darkness to better explain what it does.
   • Path of Darkness
     • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%, while standing in the corridor. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.
2. There is a bug where standing in Path of Darkness waits for the Major Expedition to end, then checks if the player is standing in it, then reapplies Major Expedition again. Except, waiting for Major Expedition to end procs Concealed Weapon over and over. Giving Concealed Weapon 100% uptime, with Major Expedition, while standing in the corridor.

FIX IT ZOS

KlauthWarthog

Billium813 wrote: »

So, if you are meant to constantly have

Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

Standing on the corridor constantly refreshes the Major Expedition buff. This happens by ending the current instance of the buff. and starting a new one.
It is this constant "kill buff, apply buff" that continuously triggers Concealed Weapon while standing on the path.

Billium813

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

So, if you are meant to constantly have

Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

Standing on the corridor constantly refreshes the Major Expedition buff. This happens by ending the current instance of the buff. and starting a new one.
It is this constant "kill buff, apply buff" that continuously triggers Concealed Weapon while standing on the path.

There was a similar issue awhile ago with Templar Sacred Ground passive and Ritual of Retribution. The issue was on HOW the game detects you are standing in an area and ESO has long had that trouble. They were cheesing the proc condition so they WEREN'T really looking at the area and instead were looking at the healing ticks to know if it should proc, except RoR doesn't heal...

The interesting thing about Path of Darkness is trying to figure out how the game determines a player is standing in the corridor and why doesn't it apply Major Expedition for 4 seconds at a minimum? If it applied for 4 seconds, we should at least see a 4 second gap between stepping into Path of Darkness -> Concealed Weapon proc. Unless Path of Darkness really is removing the current Major Expedition each tick and renewing it... which seems like pretty a inefficient way of doing it compared to a simple conditional check.

Or perhaps applying buffs to players just automatically removes the current buff, if it exists, rather than just resetting a timer. Are there other skills in the game like this that trigger off a player losing a buff? They may not account for that in their code that applies buffs.

iow:

Path of Darkness(player) {
if (player.getBuffTimer("Major Expedition") < 3 seconds)
player.apply("Major Expedition", 4);
}

Theignson

Concealed weapon needs this nerf if it happens, it is absurdly overpowered,
Concealed weapon: 1) does decent damage 2) sets enemy off balance = more damage 3) gives permanent 15% speed increase and 4) has (currently) 100% uptime 10% additional damage uptime when used with refreshing path.

100% uptime of 10% increased damage is the most absurd part. There are entire sets that give this (major berserk) as their bonus.

remove minor expedition and make the 10% damage uptime truly limited not 100% through this refreshing path bug

Of course no NB will like this idea but OP is OP

katorga

Ya, what was happening was each time path refreshed major expedition, on each tick of path, at counted as "ending", and triggered the 5s of 10% damage buff. Effectively it gives NB 100% uptime on 45% movement speed and 10% damage while in combat. I think was INTENDED and meant to be OP by the devs.

In no way shape or form should a *spammable* have major berserk, much less an unnamed 10% damage buff that stacks with major berserk. It should not have passive minor expedition either.

Both are broken, and both have far more relative value compared to other secondary effects found on competing spammables.

It is like ZOS specifically engineered it so NB would have zero negatives running sea serpent's coil. And it gets worse. Compared to my Stam Sorc, the only other class close in speed potential, my Sorc has to waste two slots to get 45% movement speed and blow 2 GCD. My NB gets all this passively (Major Resolve too) just from using my spammable and hot. No wasted slots or GCD. Other classes not only have to waste slots and GCD, they also have to start wasting jewelry traits for swift or an entire set to overcome the missing minor expedition ,

The more I think about it the more I get chafed. NB is the ONLY class for a lot of tasty goodies. Hmmm, wonder how that happened.

React

Billium813 wrote: »

• Path of Darkness
  • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.

• Concealed Weapon
  • Slash an enemy, dealing 2323 Magic Damage. If you strike an enemy from their flank you set them Off Balance. When you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Major Expedition ends while in combat, your damage done is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. While slotted, you gain Minor Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%.

---

What am I missing here, this is unintended behavior and a bug, right?

You lay down a Path of Darkness, gain Major Expedition (is it gain for 10 seconds? or gain while standing in the path?). I assume they intend it to be "while standing in the corridor"...

So, if you are meant to constantly have Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

It seems to me, from my laymen perspective, that there are two issues here:

1. ZOS needs to clean up the wording of Path of Darkness to better explain what it does.
   • Path of Darkness
     • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%, while standing in the corridor. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.
2. There is a bug where standing in Path of Darkness waits for the Major Expedition to end, then checks if the player is standing in it, then reapplies Major Expedition again. Except, waiting for Major Expedition to end procs Concealed Weapon over and over. Giving Concealed Weapon 100% uptime, with Major Expedition, while standing in the corridor.

FIX IT ZOS

If this behavior is unintended, then so is mara's balm proccing when effects are reapplied. Same exact concept.

Given that they have adjusted mara's balm twice now, I would presume effects that are refreshed before expiration counting towards "when this effect ends" prerequisites, is intended behavior.

The_Titan_Tim

React wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

• Path of Darkness
  • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.

• Concealed Weapon
  • Slash an enemy, dealing 2323 Magic Damage. If you strike an enemy from their flank you set them Off Balance. When you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Major Expedition ends while in combat, your damage done is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. While slotted, you gain Minor Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%.

---

What am I missing here, this is unintended behavior and a bug, right?

You lay down a Path of Darkness, gain Major Expedition (is it gain for 10 seconds? or gain while standing in the path?). I assume they intend it to be "while standing in the corridor"...

So, if you are meant to constantly have Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

It seems to me, from my laymen perspective, that there are two issues here:

1. ZOS needs to clean up the wording of Path of Darkness to better explain what it does.
   • Path of Darkness
     • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%, while standing in the corridor. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.
2. There is a bug where standing in Path of Darkness waits for the Major Expedition to end, then checks if the player is standing in it, then reapplies Major Expedition again. Except, waiting for Major Expedition to end procs Concealed Weapon over and over. Giving Concealed Weapon 100% uptime, with Major Expedition, while standing in the corridor.

FIX IT ZOS

If this behavior is unintended, then so is mara's balm proccing when effects are reapplied. Same exact concept.

Given that they have adjusted mara's balm twice now, I would presume effects that are refreshed before expiration counting towards "when this effect ends" prerequisites, is intended behavior.

You bring up a great point, maybe every situation where effects are refreshed should no longer be considered fall-offs, this would help Jabs against Mara as the ability keeps refreshing snares.

Billium813

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

React wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

• Path of Darkness
  • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.

• Concealed Weapon
  • Slash an enemy, dealing 2323 Magic Damage. If you strike an enemy from their flank you set them Off Balance. When you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Major Expedition ends while in combat, your damage done is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. While slotted, you gain Minor Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%.

---

What am I missing here, this is unintended behavior and a bug, right?

You lay down a Path of Darkness, gain Major Expedition (is it gain for 10 seconds? or gain while standing in the path?). I assume they intend it to be "while standing in the corridor"...

So, if you are meant to constantly have Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

It seems to me, from my laymen perspective, that there are two issues here:

1. ZOS needs to clean up the wording of Path of Darkness to better explain what it does.
   • Path of Darkness
     • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%, while standing in the corridor. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.
2. There is a bug where standing in Path of Darkness waits for the Major Expedition to end, then checks if the player is standing in it, then reapplies Major Expedition again. Except, waiting for Major Expedition to end procs Concealed Weapon over and over. Giving Concealed Weapon 100% uptime, with Major Expedition, while standing in the corridor.

FIX IT ZOS

If this behavior is unintended, then so is mara's balm proccing when effects are reapplied. Same exact concept.

Given that they have adjusted mara's balm twice now, I would presume effects that are refreshed before expiration counting towards "when this effect ends" prerequisites, is intended behavior.

You bring up a great point, maybe every situation where effects are refreshed should no longer be considered fall-offs, this would help Jabs against Mara as the ability keeps refreshing snares.

Why should refreshes ever be considered "fall-offs"? Just conceptually, that doesn't make any sense and is non-intuitive. If I'm standing in an AOE that says "while standing in this AOE, gain X", then I would ASSUME that I have X at all times, CONSTANTLY while in the AOE. I wouldn't expect that X is constantly applying/removing in a constant loop. That may work for the game internally, but it causes bizarre, non-intuitive behavior for anything that checks for buffs being removed, like in Concealed Weapon

Billium813

Is there an addon for logging when debuffs are added/removed?

In the Kvatch Arena, the player is applied with a debuff that is meant to block stealth.



I'm curious if this debuff is constant, or is being added/removed. I'm curious how systemic this behavior may be in the game.

birdik

Theignson wrote: »

2) sets enemy off balance = more damage

Ppl still think that off balance gives bonus damage ( without star of course, but who use it )

Chilly-McFreeze

Billium813 wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

React wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

• Path of Darkness
  • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.

• Concealed Weapon
  • Slash an enemy, dealing 2323 Magic Damage. If you strike an enemy from their flank you set them Off Balance. When you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Major Expedition ends while in combat, your damage done is increased by 10% for 5 seconds. While slotted, you gain Minor Expedition, increasing your Movement Speed by 15%.

---

What am I missing here, this is unintended behavior and a bug, right?

You lay down a Path of Darkness, gain Major Expedition (is it gain for 10 seconds? or gain while standing in the path?). I assume they intend it to be "while standing in the corridor"...

So, if you are meant to constantly have Major Expedition while standing in the corridor, and for 4 seconds after leaving the area, you should not be procing Concealed Weapon while standing in the corridor!

It seems to me, from my laymen perspective, that there are two issues here:

1. ZOS needs to clean up the wording of Path of Darkness to better explain what it does.
   • Path of Darkness
     • Create a corridor of shadows for 10 seconds, granting you and allies in the area Major Expedition, increasing movement speed by 30%, while standing in the corridor. Effect persists for 4 seconds after leaving the path.
2. There is a bug where standing in Path of Darkness waits for the Major Expedition to end, then checks if the player is standing in it, then reapplies Major Expedition again. Except, waiting for Major Expedition to end procs Concealed Weapon over and over. Giving Concealed Weapon 100% uptime, with Major Expedition, while standing in the corridor.

FIX IT ZOS

If this behavior is unintended, then so is mara's balm proccing when effects are reapplied. Same exact concept.

Given that they have adjusted mara's balm twice now, I would presume effects that are refreshed before expiration counting towards "when this effect ends" prerequisites, is intended behavior.

You bring up a great point, maybe every situation where effects are refreshed should no longer be considered fall-offs, this would help Jabs against Mara as the ability keeps refreshing snares.

Why should refreshes ever be considered "fall-offs"? Just conceptually, that doesn't make any sense and is non-intuitive. If I'm standing in an AOE that says "while standing in this AOE, gain X", then I would ASSUME that I have X at all times, CONSTANTLY while in the AOE. I wouldn't expect that X is constantly applying/removing in a constant loop. That may work for the game internally, but it causes bizarre, non-intuitive behavior for anything that checks for buffs being removed, like in Concealed Weapon

Have you ever used a buff tracker? It's clearly visible (at least from the Add Ons I use) that such conditional duration buffs get constantly reapplied.

It's a conceptual question. You get a 4s buff for being in an AoE.
A ) either your buff expires after 4s even if you stay inside the AoE and get then reapplied. Which leaves you with the issues:
- that you could leave the AoE with 1s remaining duration and it falls off immediately.
B ) Or the buff gets reapplied every second you meet the condition (being inside an AoE) to make sure you can leave with a 4s buff.

Additionally option A) let's you be in an AoE for 3s (after the first sec) without granting you the buff. So logically it makes sense for me to constantly drop/refresh suchs buffs.

TheTuSiK

It was confusing to me at first too when I saw it in patch notes a while back. I thought that to make it work Nightblades would need to move in and out of Path of Darkness to gain and drop Major Expedition. But it is as mentioned above - while you stand in PoD it refreshes Major Expedition every second, which means that it applies the buff and then it ends because it applies again. In that moment, when the new Major Expedition is appplied the condition to proc Concealed Weapons is met and you gain 10% buff. So as long as you have PoD active and you stay in it, or you left it 4s ago you'll get the buff. So for pve it's basically permament 10% boost (most likely to be dropped in execute but still). I like it and don't at the same time. Nightblades in pve have so many skills to fit that they run out of space on the bar. No flexibility. On mag you'd want: execute (impale), siphoning ability for 8% mag, Concealed weapon and Grim Focous. If you wanna play on range you use the last spot for range spammable (unless you go with swallow soul). There's no space for other good skills nb has access to. Skills like inner light or camo hunter also won't find a place on a bar. Nightblade needed a buff but the way it works - I'm not a fan. This skill that should be a spammable is being used as a passive most of the time.

Treeshka

Did not test anything in patch notes but in live server whatever buff is refreshed on you is considered as ended as well.

Lets say you get a Major Expedition while standing in Path skill. Which lasts for four seconds. If you stand inside it will refresh every second. On server side it will count as end as well. So if you stand inside you get that ten percent damage done.

Same goes for the Mara's Balm set. Lets say you are standing inside the enemy Caltrops which applies Major Breach to you. Caltrops deals damage every second, so while standing inside you will get Major Breach reapplied to you for every second. On server side you will also be getting a new Major Breach effect every second because it gets reapplied, which procs the set.

Of course set has one second cooldown but back in the day it did not has any cooldown, and it was just free healing by simply standing inside the red.

Well here we need clarification from developers if this is the intended way how buffs considered end and reapplied. If this is a bug Nightblade will fall even more below in certain categories.

I do not speak about player versus player situations. We all know what is best there in current patch, and they seems to be buffed again. They are getting Major Berserk with chains, which makes me think about a certain character from certain fighting game.

TechMaybeHic

Yeah, I think it goes against logic but Mara's and Concealed both follow that rule. Its either intended or something at the core of their code on how refreshing buffs and debuffs work.

Billium813

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Yeah, I think it goes against logic but Mara's and Concealed both follow that rule. Its either intended or something at the core of their code on how refreshing buffs and debuffs work.

Personally, I would like it if we could hear something from ZOS on it. I may not like the behavior, but if it's working as intended this way, then I would REALLY like them to confirm that and maybe look at updating the Path of Darkness description to make it more obvious.

Until then, for me at least, it's a bug that I think ZOS should fix in Q3.

the1andonlyskwex

Billium813 wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Yeah, I think it goes against logic but Mara's and Concealed both follow that rule. Its either intended or something at the core of their code on how refreshing buffs and debuffs work.

Personally, I would like it if we could hear something from ZOS on it. I may not like the behavior, but if it's working as intended this way, then I would REALLY like them to confirm that and maybe look at updating the Path of Darkness description to make it more obvious.

Until then, for me at least, it's a bug that I think ZOS should fix in Q3.

I'm pretty sure the current behavior is also consistent with Warden's Bond With Nature passive.

FrancisCrawford

ZoS really needs to do a tooltips pass. It should start with checking every use of the word "ally(ies)" and clarifying whether you're an ally, and continue by making sure every proc based on a "heal" is clear about whether or not overhealing is included.

Then it should also get to whether the proc condition discussed in this thread is or isn't "ends or is refreshed".