Stealth classes are always broken. Prove me wrong

kirk_lewis_ESO

Discuss

isadoraisacat

that sneaky thiefy thing never appealed to me so personally I wouldn’t know, never used that play style.

boi_anachronism_

Never used it but I have no issues countering so it doesn't matter to me.

TaSheen

Don't use it personally. And I don't care if you think it's 'broke".

ArchangelIsraphel

ok cool

BlueRaven

Well they certainly did break Bosmers when they took theirs away.

chessalavakia_ESO

Always might not be 100% accurate but, I would say that generally the archetype doesn't produce enjoyable PvP gameplay when other forms of play exist.

It's not really fun to not be able to punish people that attack you for many people.

It's not really fun to get killed out of nowhere for many people.

It's not really fun to have a teammate that can't do much in normal situations because their investment into stealth limits their character in other areas which leaves you stuck hoping they produce abnormal situations or losing.

With that said, the archetype is like one shot snipers or fast short range burst damage characters in that despite it generally being a pain to play against or play on a team with it's probably not going anywhere.

Soarora

I consider them environmental hazards. Once you know they're there or if they mess up (you see them before they go stealth/know where exactly they are) they're not a problem.

disintegr8

In general, anything that annoys you is often called 'broken'.

Stealth players are no more annoying than unkillable tank builds, gankers or players who hog and keep getting Emp, over and over and over again. I pity all of them - and that's just the start of my list.

Snaggel

Nightblades hide in the shadows. Others hide behind their shield or a fat, regenerative and mitigating hitpoint bar (except for sorcerers who hide in the distance with streak/BOL).

It's all fair game. Maybe consider taking any free targeting direct aoe ability with decent radius or stealth detect (especially potions) to completely invalidate the defense stealth provides. Easy to dot them down too and they'll die in stealth unless they come out of it to heal themselves, that's when you can strike. Like a submarine that has to resurface.There are plentiful of counters. Not so many counters for block, namely to dogpile on a blocking person and simple exhaust them with superior numbers or a few skills that can CC enemies bypassing block.

It is namely in imperial city where stealth is a problem because the stakes of loosing your valuables to a surprse gank without alerting you if you should run away are much higher.

You also got to remember that a stealthed person is not contributing in any direct damage, healing or drawing aggro. In teamplay, a lot of players hate stealth players because it means that they are the ones who will get piled on while the stealthed player usually pops like a balloon if any competent player tries to apply any burst because a stealth playstyle, in order to be effective, requires a vast majority of your resources to be allocated into offense with very little room for defense.

Of course stealth is also situationally strong when it can be used to bypass player awareness to kill them, which makes it so satisfying to play and frustrating to play against, but there's still at least one person who has good time when they can succesfully play with stealth. You cannot please everyone. That is true until a stealth player faces a group of people and none of them are fragile enough to be bursted, they have the tools to relentlessly hunt/burst you down or a reactive healer to save the poor person getting ambushed. You see that a lot among skilled players.

Start hiding behind your own defenses, group up, slot anti stealth skills and you'll fare fine against stealth. Personally, I find it more aggravating having to deal with swift, tanky and perman blocking/dodging players that runs in rings around a stupid rock, tree or even a crate, canceling all your animations and attacks while they get a free reign to heal themselves. It's called exploiting line of sight and I think that's a much greater issue and a form of defense than a stealth is, but that's another story.

Vulkunne

You don't just 'play' a Stealth character. Its not like a Warrior or Mage where you just melee with other players or throw spells around.

No a stealth character is a unique experience because it first requires patience. And for many players this is not fun apparently hah. But it can be loads of fun when you realize this and use it to your advantage. Its a manner of thinking first and gameplay second.

Furthermore, people complain about Stealth characters you know not performing to their standards in a group or what not. Fun fact, the value a Stealth character contributes is because they're different from the rest of the group. They are the derivative to your equation that's one step forward or backward that others in the group cannot make.

FrancisCrawford

BlueRaven wrote: »

Well they certainly did break Bosmers when they took theirs away.

Hence my feline thief's name:

Grumpy Ex Wood Elf

wolfie1.0.

No more so than tank classes.

Artim_X

Broken in what context? In PvE, stealth isn't that important and anyone can carry stealth related sets or drink invisibility potions.

In PvP, there are so many counters to stealth, just need to pick the one that suits you the best.

JavaRen

Point 1: absolute statements are very rarely correct.

Point 2: assertions of opinion followed by "prove me wrong" are always incorrect.

TybaltKaine

Stealth isn't broken at all. It's actually really easy to counter. You are probably running across people who not just run stealth, but actually play stealthily. Deliberately setting up the opponent, waiting for the right moment to strike, hitting with all they have and fading away again. There are ways to mitigate this, simplest comes from Fighter's and Mages guild lines. More complex ones come from sets, but that is really for people who don't want to sacrifice a single skill slot to do it (or can't in the case of one bar players).

Nearly every AOE/Ground Effect in the game breaks stealth. Combine that with Dark Convergence and drop caltrops in front of you. Watch the stealthed characters get pulled to you and broken out of stealth, then damaged twice over, on top of whatever you can do to them while they are pulled/stunned. That's just a quick example of a simple and very achievable counter that doesn't give up a skill slot for Magelight.

Some monster sets like Baron Thirsk mark the enemy, which gives you a free way to see them if they go back into stealth and does damage on top of it. You used to be able to use Soul Assault to flat out prevent them from returning to stealth at all (I dunno if they changed that, haven't used the soul tree in years).

Finally, playing a Nightblade is the best counter to a Nightblade. You have all the tools you need to counter stealth built in to the class.

If that's not enough for you, here is a video from 4 years ago that proves how easy it is to (and how many ways you can) counter stealth.

https://youtu.be/aiHSGXi8eNo

That's all I got.

ArchMikem

Detect Potions.

Drink one and watch them flail wondering why you're attacking them when they've been spamming Cloak.

I say this as a Nightblade main.

opalcity

I really don't enjoy it when people make posts like this, because usually they already have a very entrenched opinion, and they don't want to be proven wrong, they just want their opinion reinforced.

You don't even state how you think they are "broken".

Sometimes when people make forum posts complaining about stealth it's because they just failed a Heist. Or because they just got ganked in PvP.

BixenteN7Akantor

The problem I have with Stealth in PvP is that Cloak is a get-out-of-jail free card. Mages Guild Light is bugged and doesn't preven NBs from re-cloaking.
Get into a fight, roll your head on your kb, press cloak, leave. I know it works like this because I do that from time to time, and I get kills, and I easily get out of fights.
Also it's incredibly frustrating to fight against a cloak NB, kinda like punching the air against something invisible and too fast, and the only thing that end the fight is you surrendering, or walk very far.
Detect potions is good stuff but then we're forced to only use them.
It reminds me of the Dead-Ringer in TF2.
Stealthy one-shot assassin builds are fine in my opinion, the get out of jail free card isn't.

SaffronCitrusflower

NB stealth is grossly OP, no question about it. It shouldn't last as long as it does, and they shouldn't be able to initiate a fight then immediately disappear into stealth. There should be at least a 3 second cool down for going back into stealth after initiating combat.

ArchMikem

BixenteN7Akantor wrote: »

The problem I have with Stealth in PvP is that Cloak is a get-out-of-jail free card. Mages Guild Light is bugged and doesn't preven NBs from re-cloaking.
Get into a fight, roll your head on your kb, press cloak, leave. I know it works like this because I do that from time to time, and I get kills, and I easily get out of fights.
Also it's incredibly frustrating to fight against a cloak NB, kinda like punching the air against something invisible and too fast, and the only thing that end the fight is you surrendering, or walk very far.
Detect potions is good stuff but then we're forced to only use them.
It reminds me of the Dead-Ringer in TF2.
Stealthy one-shot assassin builds are fine in my opinion, the get out of jail free card isn't.

I have both my standard Stam Crit pots and Detect Pots on my wheel, with the detect secondary. Whenever I see a nightblade pop in on someone nearby I quickly swap out pots, rush over and drink one. As long as I stay near them I'm lighting the NB up for everyone else nearby.

I have noticed though the duality of Magelight. Everyone trying to use it claims it doesn't work. Every nightblade, including myself, claims they get marked by it often.

robpr

Just fix detection skills missing reveal "tick" and re-stealth penalty and it will be fine even if IMO they all cost too much for what they do compared to cloak itself. Radiant Magelight seem to be most reliable from all other morphs. Pots are fine, considering you have to sacrifice choice of another pot to use.

TybaltKaine

The problem with Magelight is the range. It's not that it doesn't work, it's that most NB's know to do a couple of rolls away after melee attacking or just attacking from range to avoid it. Most seasoned Blades aren't gonna stand around in a 5-meter radius after they hit you. It's hit, roll twice, stealth, move (if I don't know if you have it) or if I know you have it, ranged attack and stealth again.

You can prevent this by dropping an aoe around a NB when they pop out. Or, if you really hate getting ganked, playing a NB and using Reaper's Mark on them when you see them.

Hapexamendios

I just can't take a "Prove me wrong" statements seriously. The person making them is either so entrenched in their thinking discussion is futile or they make it just make it for kicks hoping to start something.

Vevvev

TybaltKaine wrote: »

The problem with Magelight is the range. It's not that it doesn't work, it's that most NB's know to do a couple of rolls away after melee attacking or just attacking from range to avoid it. Most seasoned Blades aren't gonna stand around in a 5-meter radius after they hit you. It's hit, roll twice, stealth, move (if I don't know if you have it) or if I know you have it, ranged attack and stealth again.

You can prevent this by dropping an aoe around a NB when they pop out. Or, if you really hate getting ganked, playing a NB and using Reaper's Mark on them when you see them.

5 meter radius? It's 8 meters away from you, which means it's farther than melee range.

The change buffing all detection abilities was patch 7.1.5. (Waking Flame), and you can see all the buffs at this link.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7368146/#Comment_7368146

Magelight, Expert Hunter, and Flare all got buffed with Magelight and Expert Hunter having their ticks for detection getting reduced from a second to half a second, Flare getting Major Protection for just being slotted, and the duration increased on from 3 seconds to 4 on everything.

It is more easy to catch cloakers now than it's ever been, and people still complain despite the fact active uses of detection outright shuts down invisibility. A good trick is to run where the invisibile person is going to be than to blindly run where they used to be. Odds are they're no longer at that spot anymore.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

Caribou77

Crutch skill on a crutch class. There are so many nbs these days that many are bad, somehow. For a skilled player, nb is now a bigger carry than dk. Fastest speed, highest burst dmg, 2nd strongest heals, no longer squishy (at all)…. and cloak, which over half of nbs on the forum will argue is underpowered and easily countered.

At a minimum, zos should fix the reveal skills to prevent immediately recloaking.

No class should be able to cloak away from damage in the middle of a melee brawl. Roll dodge, block, sure. But one class that can repeatedly “disappear” to avoid all incoming damage? Really?

Kartalin

Vulkunne wrote: »

No a stealth character is a unique experience because it first requires patience.

Or, like my experience in BGs last night, you wait until a target is engaged with another player(s) and attempt to burst them from range.

I guess it does require patience, but it still frustrates.

Casul

I run soul assault on my magplar and that feels pretty good. With that in mind I am also a glass cannon with 8k spell damage shooting laser beams from the outside of the fight.

DrNukenstein

There is an MMO with no stealth class and in that game they don't have a tank meta, what they have is so much worse.

It is a ranged meta, and it is why a strong stealth class is necessary to healthy pvp.

When ranged players have nothing to fear because they can see any threat heading their way, they become out of control. If it weren't for gankers, PVP would be full of magsorcs running 17k health. Those magsorcs would kill you with 3 pointers from across the map 24/7, and if they whiffed once they'd just do it again and steak away if you got close. That play style being near unviable, and the fact that so many players are built to survive a health-check gank is a sign that ESO PVP isn't that unhealthy.

It's hard to balance, but it's a part of balance in these games. In fact, you could say stealth classes enforce balance because a build that doesn't concede enough damage to survive a gank is arguably unviable.

CameraBeardThePirate

If you've ever played TF2, a class based shooter, you'd know that Spy (the stealth class) is one of the worst classes in the game. Yet, it's also one of the classes newer players rage at the most.

Stealth classes in any game are "noob" stompers because they tend to punish bad/uninformed gameplay. In return, they're often countered with relative ease using in-game mechanics, teamwork, and game-sense. Are nightblades strong right now? Absolutely - they've been receiving buff after buff for a few patches now with relatively few nerfs. But I wouldn't paint with such a broad stroke and say that all stealth characters in games are broken at all - there's a plethora of games where the "Stealth" class sees relatively low use/pick-rate.