Merciless Resolve...help?

Zama666 · October 16

1xMerciless Resolve 15k damage
1xIncapcitating strike 14k Damage.
Both were crits...
3k left, I was left dead very soon.

How buffed physical and spell resistance is about 26k....Would more resist have saved me?

Could I have blocked Inca Strike?

Thankz,
Z

dogshaman · October 16

I have 29k spell resist and 29k phys resist with 2.4k crit resist and I also get hit with that same amount for around 15-17k for Merciless Resolve and around 14k for Incap Strike.

Don't know if blocking helps, as I only get hit by these attacks from a nb in stealth or from fighting a zerg. (Battle can sometimes get too chaotic and can never block in time.)

My health is around 38k, so that is what saves me most times, if I can get a quick heal off afterwards.

There's also a Templar skill (green swirly tornado?) that usually hits me for around 24-27k.

I've tried increasing spell/phys/crit resists and health, but then don't do enough damage to matter and just take longer to die.

If anyone has any tips?

Elendir2am · October 16

High crit resist can decrease occurrence of such phenomene significantly. However some NB will still pul it on you.

Afterip · October 16

If you want to survive you should make all your gear Impenetrable and equip Rallying Cry set. It will give you 2574 crit resistance or 39%.

evLRise · October 16

It's generally not so much about gear but about how you respond to it.

Incap + Merciless is the basic NB combo. It's counterable by blocking, dodging, having a shield up or having a lot of resistances & health.

99% of Nightblades will throw the merciless bow proc out as soon as incap hits. It is NOT a guaranteed hit. If you break free and immediately dodge, you will dodge the merciless 100% of times. Experienced NBs will expect you to dodge and either hold down a heavy attack to connect when your dodge is over and follow up with the merciless afterwards, but this also allows you a small window to block & heal.

Generally NB has 0 pressure and the only way they can kill you is through their Ult + Merciless combo.

Aside from dodging the arrow from merciless, you need to keep an eye out for indicators of incoming burst, and get a 'feel' of when they have their ult available.

Look for things like cloaking, debuffs like major breach from infused weapon, mages guild contingency etc. These, alongside a heavy attack in most cases mark the transition from debuffing you to burst.

Short version: Breaking free and immediately dodging after incap will render 90% of NBs out there useless, as most people playing NB have no clue how to dynamically mix their combo up when the opponent knows how to respond.

evLRise · October 16

dogshaman wrote: »

I have 29k spell resist and 29k phys resist with 2.4k crit resist and I also get hit with that same amount for around 15-17k for Merciless Resolve and around 14k for Incap Strike.

Don't know if blocking helps, as I only get hit by these attacks from a nb in stealth or from fighting a zerg. (Battle can sometimes get too chaotic and can never block in time.)

My health is around 38k, so that is what saves me most times, if I can get a quick heal off afterwards.

There's also a Templar skill (green swirly tornado?) that usually hits me for around 24-27k.

I've tried increasing spell/phys/crit resists and health, but then don't do enough damage to matter and just take longer to die.

If anyone has any tips?

1st most important thing to remember is - your tooltips will look different in an actual fight. buffs sometimes run out and you can't perfectly refresh them every time. Players will take note of this and use it to their advantage.

In regards to the templar skill you mentioned, that is probably Power of the Light ( Big green arrow above your head ). That amount of damage can only happen if they build into a heavy crit setup with Mechanical Acuity ( look the set up ). Generally plars playing Acuity can only damage you once every 30s ( that's the cooldown of the set - you can see their character turning completely blue when acuity procs ).

You need to keep in mind the timer in between these acuity procs and preemptively shift your game style towards somethign defensive when the timer gets close. Make sure you have all buffs & heals up, are ready to burst heal and if you're low resources, heavy attack to make sure you have a decent enough stam pool to block when the burst arrives.

Ideally, you might want to NOT randomly stun the opponent when the acuity timer draws close, unless you're sure you might get a kill. Stunning is just going to give them 7s of CC immunity and interrupted offense. And having that stun available when their mechanical acuity procs is a pretty big deal.

After the acuity goes off, you have ~30 seconds to deal damage at minimal risk and secure the kill.

Generally most plar players running this setup are aware that their kill potential is almost 0 outside of when acuity is active, so in most cases they will just turtle on backbar and spam heals, trying to stay alive until they get their ult and acuity up. If you have enough survival to brace through the acuity phase and counter attack immediately after it goes off, that's your best window to secure a kill.

Veinblood1965 · October 16

evLRise wrote: »

It's generally not so much about gear but about how you respond to it.

Incap + Merciless is the basic NB combo. It's counterable by blocking, dodging, having a shield up or having a lot of resistances & health.

99% of Nightblades will throw the merciless bow proc out as soon as incap hits. It is NOT a guaranteed hit. If you break free and immediately dodge, you will dodge the merciless 100% of times. Experienced NBs will expect you to dodge and either hold down a heavy attack to connect when your dodge is over and follow up with the merciless afterwards, but this also allows you a small window to block & heal.

Generally NB has 0 pressure and the only way they can kill you is through their Ult + Merciless combo.

Aside from dodging the arrow from merciless, you need to keep an eye out for indicators of incoming burst, and get a 'feel' of when they have their ult available.

Look for things like cloaking, debuffs like major breach from infused weapon, mages guild contingency etc. These, alongside a heavy attack in most cases mark the transition from debuffing you to burst.

Short version: Breaking free and immediately dodging after incap will render 90% of NBs out there useless, as most people playing NB have no clue how to dynamically mix their combo up when the opponent knows how to respond.

This is so true. I play a NB bow ganker(my main toon) and when another NB tries and ganks me, the second I take any damage the first thing I do is a dodge roll then a block, then look for something to break line of sight, a rock or tree, and hit a heal spell. I'm only running 28k health and rarely die quickly due to ganks by following just those three responses. Once in a while though I'm dead super fast and I've got to hand it to the opponent, they know their stuff.

As a ganker the BEST defence is high health. I just plain leave anyone who has over 35k health alone, regardless of resists etc I can only kill someone with over that about 25% of the time in a second so I don't bother. And above 40k health they could just stand there and laugh at me.

evLRise · October 16

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

This is so true. I play a NB ganker(my main toon) and when another NB tries and ganks me, the second I take any damage the first thing I do is a dodge roll then a block, then look for something to break line of sight, a rock or tree, and hit a heal spell. I'm only running 28k health and rarely die quickly due to ganks by following just those three responses. Once in a while though I'm dead super fast and I've got to hand it to the opponent, they know their stuff.

The trick on ganker is to run whirling blades instead of the standard NB execute, as well as undodgeable AoE procs like flame blossom. Then dodging is just a death sentence as you can't heal / block.

Veinblood1965 · October 16

evLRise wrote: »

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

This is so true. I play a NB ganker(my main toon) and when another NB tries and ganks me, the second I take any damage the first thing I do is a dodge roll then a block, then look for something to break line of sight, a rock or tree, and hit a heal spell. I'm only running 28k health and rarely die quickly due to ganks by following just those three responses. Once in a while though I'm dead super fast and I've got to hand it to the opponent, they know their stuff.

The trick on ganker is to run whirling blades instead of the standard NB execute, as well as undodgeable AoE procs like flame blossom. Then dodging is just a death sentence as you can't heal / block.

This is true, I run a bow build when in groups due to running Viscous Death and Tarnished at the same time which is really effective, and dual wield when not in a group. When running the DW I do like WB's and you are right it's tough to avoid.

CameraBeardThePirate · October 16

evLRise wrote: »

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

This is so true. I play a NB ganker(my main toon) and when another NB tries and ganks me, the second I take any damage the first thing I do is a dodge roll then a block, then look for something to break line of sight, a rock or tree, and hit a heal spell. I'm only running 28k health and rarely die quickly due to ganks by following just those three responses. Once in a while though I'm dead super fast and I've got to hand it to the opponent, they know their stuff.

The trick on ganker is to run whirling blades instead of the standard NB execute, as well as undodgeable AoE procs like flame blossom. Then dodging is just a death sentence as you can't heal / block.

Flame Blossom is doubly good as it goes through block - for some reason it counts as DoT damage so it ignores block mitigation.

fred4 · October 19

Zama666 wrote: »

1xMerciless Resolve 15k damage
1xIncapcitating strike 14k Damage.
Both were crits...
3k left, I was left dead very soon.

How buffed physical and spell resistance is about 26k....Would more resist have saved me?

Most likely only substantially more, e.g. 40K+. Thus the short answer is: No. Don't build for that much resistance, unless you want to be a troll tank, cause you'll sacrifice everything.

Would 2.5K crit resist / Rallying Cry have saved you? Same answer. 4K, maybe. Less than that: No. I personally like having 2K - 3K crit resist, but merely that amount is not the best answer to nightblade ganks (which I'll get to).

Would higher health, e.g. 35K+ have saved you? Honestly, also kind of meh. Your health, at 22K if that's what it was, was too low. On many builds 30K is arguably minimum these days. However my feeling on building for health over mitigation is that this only works well if your build has heals to match, preferably heals that scale with health. A high health build with weak heals just takes a little longer to kill, whereas a lower health build with more mitigation and the same heals would make those heals go further. That said, either approach would, of course, give you a buffer to run for line-of-sight, dodge, block, and so on.

Could I have blocked Inca Strike?

If you heard it or you reacted to the Miat addon warning sound, sure. Ults have a 400ms delay before they land. There are nastier combos than an Incap / Merciless one, combos that have no delays. Both of these skills have the 400ms delay. This is how, as already mentioned, you can break free Incap and dodge roll Merciless in time. With good ping, playing with sound, and good reaction times, of course.

If standing on a flag, waiting, always hold block, or at least that's one way to thwart ganks.

To a degree it all depends where you play. You can be subject to ganks anywhere, but they tend to be especially frequent and brutal in Imperial City, because NPCs are readily available for nightblades to build Balorgh to 500. This is why 25K armor might as well be the same as 15K or no armor. A nightblade with full Balorgh, some light armor, Shattered Fate and a Sharpened Weapon might mitigate it all. A troll tank friend once told me, granted a long time ago, that increasing armor feels effective up to ~45K in PvP. That was before Shattered Fate, which by far not every NB will run, but which is an option nowadays.

In my book the most effective solution against nightblade ganks are the Esoteric Greaves. Nothing else even comes close. That said, they protect you in that initial "out of nowhere" moment, while you are at full stamina. They are finnicky in how and when they work and they have a large impact on your playstyle and build pattern. In short, you want to block less, roll less, you need stamina sustain, but you want to be a magicka build, or one largely biased into magicka. I've used them on magblade, magsorc and magplar to equally good effect. A Wretched Vitality back bar usually goes hand in hand, but the monster and front bar sets can and should be offensive, your health can be low - 25K to 30K, your crit resist need not be super high, and you can afford to run mostly light armor.

Honorable mention goes to Zoal + Slippery CP. If you get stunned by Incap, that will automatically break you free and counter-stun the NB, before they can shoot Merciless.

Sluggy · October 19

fred4 wrote: »

Most likely only substantially more, e.g. 40K+. Thus the short answer is: No. Don't build for that much resistance, unless you want to be a troll tank, cause you'll sacrifice everything.
...
To a degree it all depends where you play. You can be subject to ganks anywhere, but they tend to be especially frequent and brutal in Imperial City, because NPCs are readily available for nightblades to build Balorgh to 500. This is why 25K armor might as well be the same as 15K or no armor. A nightblade with full Balorgh, some light armor, Shattered Fate and a Sharpened Weapon might mitigate it all. A troll tank friend once told me, granted a long time ago, that increasing armor feels effective up to ~45K in PvP. That was before Shattered Fate, which by far not every NB will run, but which is an option nowadays.

Just wanted to chime in with my own experience playing nightblade lately. I can agree that armor is next to useless in most burst scenarios. It really only helps during the time between so that they don't wear you down before the burst. I myself run a nightblade with 45k hp, 2 Hand on the front, and a sword n' shield on the back and I can absolutely hit 33k pen when I burst. And I'm not a ganker. Just a regular non-stealth brawler. I sometimes even troll tank on this build and I myself don't have more than 28k resists. It's really not worth it.

fred4 · October 20

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

As a ganker the BEST defence is high health. I just plain leave anyone who has over 35k health alone, regardless of resists etc I can only kill someone with over that about 25% of the time in a second so I don't bother.

Since I said that I don't rate health as highly as, perhaps, most people, I want to add that I nonetheless find the above to be true. The odd time I've run a high health build, I observed quite a decrease in gank attempts and in gankers persisting when they otherwise might have. Indeed the downside of my builds with the Esoteric Greaves and low health is that you will frequently be the priority target. Not so much an issue when ganked, but when you are focused by multiple brawlers. That said, you can see this as a glass half full or half empty. The upside is that you end up killing a lot of nightblades who foolishly engage with you.

I should mention that the 25K health I typically run is borderline, even with the Greaves. I occasionally get ganked successfully, either by the most extreme gank builds, or due to everything critting, or possibly due to the Greaves being inconsistent in what damage they mitigate. They don't mitigate all direct damage in PvE, despite the tooltip, for example. While I'm pretty sure they mitigate all direct skill-based player attacks, I am not sure about (Tarnished) procs and the like.