Now that mist form is out of the way, next up - Bolt Escape!

Nijjion

Best change I can think of is a charge system where they get 3 charges that they can use whenever and however they want. When BE is casted it uses a charge, it takes 8-10 seconds (balance placement here) for a charge to be reset. They still probably even get out most fights with this though but would have to be a lot more careful with their BE casts.

It gives them the mobility they need as the skill is intended for to get out of melee, Will obviously need to change gap closers a bit but need to change them being able to cast it 14 times then another 14 times if they choose to. No single class in a RvR game should have that mobility just look at meta in GW2 only 3 classes out of 8 are top tier in RvR and that game advertises everyone can do anything.

If it wasn't for hiding I think we see a lot more Sorcs for roaming.

Mojomonkeyman

Nijjion wrote: »

Best change I can think of is a charge system where they get 3 charges that they can use whenever and however they want. When BE is casted it uses a charge, it takes 8-10 seconds (balance placement here) for a charge to be reset. They still probably even get out most fights with this though but would have to be a lot more careful with their BE casts.

It gives them the mobility they need as the skill is intended for to get out of melee, Will obviously need to change gap closers a bit but need to change them being able to cast it 14 times then another 14 times if they choose to. No single class in a RvR game should have that mobility just look at meta in GW2 only 3 classes out of 8 are top tier in RvR and that game advertises everyone can do anything.

If it wasn't for hiding I think we see a lot more Sorcs for roaming.

Well, the most mobile class (thief) in RvR in GW2 isnt even part of the meta almost all groups used to run (warrior, guard, necro). And two of these three happened to be the least mobile classes. Sorry, I just cannot follow your logic here. Mobility is nothing, when the game consists of baddies stacking pvt, defensive buffs and hammers to faceroll through everything...

Nijjion

@Mojomonkeyman‌

What are you talking about? Thief is the most common class roaming around... as you say most mobile and has awesome get away with stealth.

On my Necro all I see are thieves and warriors and mesmers... hard to say the others as well you just have no getaway.

Halrloprillalar

piotreb17_ESO4 wrote: »

Gedwyn wrote: »

Bolt escape is fine.
It's limited, and you can chase one down and get the kill if you really want to.

Please teach me how. After 2 zips Sorc is already out of the range of any close gap utility.

Gedwyn wrote: »

It's just an escape skill - it's not generating any kills or doing any damage.

You may be not aware of it, but you can use Bolt Escape not just for travelling and escaping. Even in its basic form, it can stun and Streak morph adds also damage and disorient.

Gedwyn wrote: »

If you let that Sorc get away, that's your choice.

If you let them come back and harass you and bolt away again - that's your fault for letting them do it. Figure out the counters and use them.

Please enlighten me! I have counters for DK and NB abilities, but somehow I cannot figure out the one for Bolt Escape, as after 2 zips Sorc is already out of the range of any close gap utility.

TL;DR he killed you with... streak??? Despite being a templar that has access to the best self-heals in game? Oh, and did I mention... Eclipse, one of the most BS spells in the game?

Actually at this point I'm convinced this is just a troll post.

Halrloprillalar

Nijjion wrote: »

popatiberiuoneb18_ESO wrote: »

snip

Sorcs can use the terrain better with bolt escape as they can use a rock to get los and then you have no way to catch up with targeted skills.

You know you can't mount up in combat right? And it's pretty bugged so you can't even mount up for about 1-2 minutes even if you are out of it.

Have yet to see even an orc wearing medium armor and manuver user player catch up to a competent geared blinking sorc... but it sounds doable... probably is that sorcs can continuously stun you with bolt escape which is the cherry on top of OPness with the skill.

Enough magicka for 10-11 bolt escapes seems quite a lot of uses for a skill like that imo. 3-4 casts gets you really far away from a fight or even to a fight to leave yourself enough magicka to compete.

If you spec SnB or at least have a decent stam build, you can spam invasion or crit charge as much and as often as the sorc can spam BE.

Tanthul

Sorry about the rather delayed response but I kind of forgot about this thread, only remembered it today after reading about the BE nerf on PTS 1.2 patch notes..

popatiberiuoneb18_ESO wrote: »

I am running a build leaning towards magika most of the times since all the tools avaible to me on my main (sorc) are magika spells. In this regard i do not have enough stamina to spam more then 3 bolts, i do try to time them and i will definatly take into consideration what you said about the delay.

With some clever use of attribute points, infused glyphs on big enchant armor only, jewelry traits and VR5 food you should be able to land on something like 2.3K hp (without the cyro buff), softcaped magicka and 1900ish stamina;) 49 points in health is the key for VR5 blue magicka/stamina food;)

About aiming skills at the mist form, cant really say they hit now can i when the vamp is full health when out of mist form while i spam damage skills towards the misty mass that runs away or snared (if lucky). If you are aware how that is possible while my skills hit then by all means do explain.

While the vampire is in mist form they have the 75% damage resistance so depending on what skill you actually used it may not damage them enough. Some may quaff a potion in between mist form casts. Use the CLS addon and check if you are actually hitting and for how much. Silver Bolts for example is a single target skill and hits just fine and so do all bow skills, Swallow Soul and Cripple that I use regularly on them:) Skills that apply a dot are particularly effective because they take full damage from the dot in between casts of mist form (of course the more frequent the dot ticks the better). One thing that comes to mind is actually missing (eg target got out of range or due to monitor/lighting conditions or even lag you're not actually aiming at the mist). I can hit them all the time and was always being hit while I used it (have not done so since the speed nerf)..

I agree with you on using tools for certain situation parts, that is not rock/paper/scissors. Rock/paper/scissors is when a DK will always kill a Vamp, when a Vamp will always kill a sorcerer and so on, or be very hard to change the outcome in such an encounter. Having static class x or spec x counters class/spec y. I like to know that i stand a chance gainst every build i meet and so do you, guess our views are not that far apart after all :P

Ah yes. That was a misconception as was talking RPS at the skill level and not the class level:)

You have valid points but think of this: only 1 out of 4 classes has access to fire spells, the others might gain some damage from using fire enchants on weapons and/or aim for fire procs from destro staff but thats about it. Fighter's guild is stamina based (magika builds are stamina starved as it is). This is the rock/paper/scissor system that i am against, force a class to spec with 1 type of armour and sacrifice half its skill slots to be able to fight a vamp, that you dont even know if a vamp or not until they use skills. I remind you that the fighter guild abilities are useless vs anything else besides vamps/wws so you end up gimping yourself beyound useless if you follow this path. DK's have it easy vs a vamp since they have fire based skills and quite a nice arsenal and yes, you dont stand a chance vs a DK with a clue, run away or get melted (rock/paper/scissors again).

Templars have Sun Fire/Vampires Bane which is excellent. Sorcerers are bound to have learnt Destro staves due to the excellect synergy with the class skills even if it's not their primary weapon. Nightblades..well nightblades are on the low end of the stick anyhow lol. But that's class skills alright.
The Fighter's Guild can indeed be used by anything and it's a skill like that directly counters both the supernatural lines and is also useful for PVE (Daedra/Undead/Werewolves are everywhere). There's no reason not to take it (it's not like we have a shortabe on skill points heh). The passives are always on anyhow. 9% extra damage on your every skill just works. With anything. Even on a pure magicka based build (not bothering to min/max all stats) you should always utilize a stamina skill to tap into your second bar (otherwise you have a useless resource bar and you're gimping yourself). When you see vampires just replace your stamina skill with Silver Bolts or Circle of Protection if you're currently filling a support/healer role on your team. You are not supposed to have the actives slotted 24/7. You're supposed to switch when you know you'll encounter vampires. Or if you're in an organized team, have a couple of your team mates on vampire countering builds (much like you have people fitting other roles as well). That's on tactical warfare. On zergfests well you don't have to do anything other than focus them lol.

I do like the idea of vampires but i dont like how they were implemented, i will go vampire on my solo roaming NB at some point for you A and C arguments and see how it goes.

Well I liked the original design that had the aspects of stealth speed/mobility and weaknesses to go with it. If Dark Stalker gets nerfed as well I find no reason whatsoever to keep being a vampire. As far as my elaborate number crunching and exploration of game mechanics goes, it's the only thing I like in vampire, I consider the skill line to be entirely useless right now apart from Dark Stalker.
As far as PVP goes, Drain Essence is bad cause it can only be done once every 2 minutes, so you're wasting a slot after you do it once. Mist form is useless and Bat Swarm is ok but there are much better choices for ultis for every class in PVP that don't come with vulnerabilities. Sorc: Negate Magic, Storm Atronach. DK: Standard or Magma Armor. Templar: Nova or Rite, NB (now that it's getting fixed): Consuming Darkness or Soul Shred
The only thing that Vampire can give to a build that can actually cause you to think about accepting the vulnerabilities that go with it is Dark Stalker and that's not even useful in combat..the price to pay for it is currently too steep. In fact if they nerfed it I would be actually glad because I would just heal vampirism on my NB and forget about it ever existed.

For solo roaming it's not bad. Certainly Dark Stalker synergizes with the element of surprise. If you pick your targets/fights it works. Just don't try to melee a DK or anyone with a shield:p For solo I like using a bow or a resto staff with NB. Ffrankly they should just give it to NB and scrap Vampire and Werewolf entirely if the plan is to leave them at their current state. What's the point of giving the class that is supposedly doing stealth better, a reduced stealth cost in stamina when they move like a snail and can't actually catch anything even with Concealed Weapon slotted? And there's a wonderful armor set that removes the stealth speed penalty but it's..light armor! Lol. Stealthy NB doesn't make any sense at the moment.

Imho Vampires should go back to their original design of being for stealth/speed/magicka/solo builds and werewolves should be fixed so they're on their original design for tanky/stamina/group builds but they're actually usable in PVP (CC break in werewolf form should be possible). Then they would have a raison d'etre. Because currently they don't. Vampire is close to useless and Werewolf is useless (only being used for ulti generation...but at the price of slotting the ulti always and switcing your weapons to fire another..).

Thanks for your time and insight, if you have any suggestion about the no damage to mist form part im all ears

See above. I suggest you really install CLS even if you keep it disabled for the majority of your playtime, so you can actually test stuff when you are in doubt. If you play on EU and are not on AD side (or have a level 10+ character not in AD side), send me a mail/whisper in game and I'll help you test it out.:)

Back on topic it's sad that they're actually nerfing BE with 1.2. If the 50% extra cost is always on the base cast then it's not rendered useless at least. If they actually base the 50% on the previous cast then I guess Sorcerers are better off with Evasive Maneuvers and one more skill is rendered useless/not worth to slot at any case (at least not the defensive morph).