Apparent NB problems

Taz07 · September 2014

So..im just gonna raise 2 points to see if im the only one who thinks they are a bit stupid.

1) The amount of races NB excel at in a min/max situation = 1. Browsing through the racial bonuses of classes it seems khajiit is ridiculously OP for NBs due to their racial bonuses. They seem to be the only race that gives more than 1 useful bonus specifically for NBs. This wont really annoy most but for players like me that want to min/max the crap outta your toon, it pretty much forces you to run khajiit, and thus if youre not AD already (which i am not) forces you into another faction which has its own apparent problems not being able to do anything else with your guilds (another can of worms i wont open right now that i think is bloody stupid)
2) The either poor choice of resource for attacks or the poor choice of words for attacks. Am i the only one who thinks its stupid to name an abilities (e.g. assassin's blade) that use magicka as a resource and don't require a weapon? I personally think using magicka for any kind of attack outside casting a support spell for NB is stupid, but ill put that aside and down to class balancing or w/e the reason is - but i just got a good lol out of how they chose to name the attacks and what resource they use..

jelliedsoup · September 2014

Whoever considered magicka/stamina at zos should never have any form of input into designing a game again.

ChillingSpree · September 2014

Taz07 wrote: »

2) The either poor choice of resource for attacks or the poor choice of words for attacks. Am i the only one who thinks its stupid to name an abilities (e.g. assassin's blade) that use magicka as a resource and don't require a weapon? I personally think using magicka for any kind of attack outside casting a support spell for NB is stupid, but ill put that aside and down to class balancing or w/e the reason is - but i just got a good lol out of how they chose to name the attacks and what resource they use..

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. The fact that magicka is a resource for weapon and bow attacks is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. It makes some sense when there's some kind of arcane energy applied to the weapon in question, but IMO should be split between the two. That is, an arcane arrow attack, for example, should cost maybe 100 magicka and 100 stamina. This would give people something more to think about when slotting certain skills. Some class skills should absolutely ONLY cost stamina, some should ONLY cost magicka, and some should cost both, if you ask me. It's completely ridiculous that magicka is used for all class skills. Why even bother having classes, if you're forced to use only weapon skills if you want to make a stamina build? If you don't max out your stamina, they'll do less damage. But if you max out your stamina, you suddenly lose access to class skills, which are the only things differentiating you from every other class. This basically concludes the argument, meaning that the preeminent way to play the game is to focus on magicka and use maybe one or two, at most, stamina skills. The fact that magicka has such an enormous advantage over stamina is a huge problem, and the primary culprit is the fact that class skills only use magicka. If they solved this problem it would go a long way towards making ESO an actual elder scrolls game, rather than a cheap knockoff, somehow butchered by AAA developers. How such a failure is possible, I have no idea, but I have faith they can fix it if they will just listen to their customers.

jaibierwb17_ESO · September 2014

The abilities point is a good one. Why do class skills (for all classes, but seems to largely affect NBs) such as as assassin's blade scale off weapon damage and weapon crit but use magicka?

IMO skills should all be either weapon or magicka based. Weapon skills should use stamina and weapon damage & crit; while Magicka based skills should use spell damage and spell crit.

I feel the whole reason stamina based builds are outclassed by magicka builds is because the class skills don't make sense. They are the most powerful skills and fair enough; but sets and armour give buffs either magicka/spell or stamina/weapon. Whereas for most NB skills you need magicka/weapon.

So if you go stamina based, you can do a lot of damage with NB based skills, but you don't have the magicka to use them. This is where the big difference in dps between NBs and sorcs, as sorcs can concentrate solely on magicka/spell and essentially ignore stamina other than minimal for the occasional dodge/block. Ignoring magicka on the other hand is not feasible for any dps build. This could easily be fixed; just make weapon based class skills use stamina instead of magicka.

Phinix1 · September 2014

Having all class abilities use and scale their damage off of magicka, even the ones that use weapon CRIT, is the most asinine design decision in the history of MMO class balance. Having to double-dip into stamina for defense as well just makes it seem like they sat around thinking "ok guys, how badly can we screw this up?"

They need morphs for class skills that turn them into STAMINA abilities that scale off STAMINA.
They need to make stamina weapon AOE worth a damn.
They should just drop the stamina as a resource AND defense stat nonsense altogether and make a 3rd ENERGY bar, and have weapons use that, and defense use stamina.

They will NEVER achieve balance by sticking to their guns with the current system.

The #1 Fatal Flaw is this: Stamina users must split their stat points between magicka and stamina to power weapon and class abilities, lowering the potency of both, while magicka users can put all their points into magicka.

Add to this the fact that most stamina abilities are garbage (obvious telegraph just BEGGING to be exploited in PvP, or crap AOE damage that only scales to a meaningful level once everything is basically dead), and I don't care HOW much stamina regen you put on medium armor.

It is a bad design and cannot be fixed in its present state. Denial will only cause more loss of subscribers and confidence of those that remain.

bosmern_ESO · September 2014

Taz07 wrote: »

So..im just gonna raise 2 points to see if im the only one who thinks they are a bit stupid.

1) The amount of races NB excel at in a min/max situation = 1. Browsing through the racial bonuses of classes it seems khajiit is ridiculously OP for NBs due to their racial bonuses. They seem to be the only race that gives more than 1 useful bonus specifically for NBs. This wont really annoy most but for players like me that want to min/max the crap outta your toon, it pretty much forces you to run khajiit, and thus if youre not AD already (which i am not) forces you into another faction which has its own apparent problems not being able to do anything else with your guilds (another can of worms i wont open right now that i think is bloody stupid)

Someone is forgetting the mighty Bosmer.

We have stealth radius reduction, combat stamina increase and a massive poison disease resistance to shrug off bow users and it increases your max stamina. Most Nightblades rely on stealth movement through cyrodiil and the stamina helps break the CC that other classes get, roll more to dodge and to travel in sneak for longer.

Not only can we sneak longer but we usually get to detect people before they detect us.

LtCrunch · September 2014

If you're going for a cookie cutter rogue/assassin build then you've got a somewhat valid point about the Khajiit. What if you're a caster NB? A healer NB? A tank NB? Khajiit is far from optimal for any of those types of builds.

Also your second complaint is really a game wide issue, it doesn't only apply to Nightblades. Templars and Dragonknight s also have skills that are melee and use melee crit but scale off of magicka.

Taz07 · September 2014

@bosmern_ESO‌ True, but im going for a strictly burst NB build - get in, 2-3 shot someone and get out, and for the the khajiit is just miles ahead with massive crit bonus (for a racial anyway) decreased stealth detection and combat regen which is meh for my purposes but still a nice boost. Mainly the crit and decresed detection (im also DC not EP so even more garbage choices haha)

Edit: yes Brandalf, going for a cookie cutter build for the NB.
Ive also only had a sorc and this is my second toon, so im only just learning about the problem being to all classes except the one i main lol. (so this problem has probably been covered before in a few threads, so apologies to anyone who will come here to complain about it)

kijima · September 2014

It depends on the gear you are going to use and the enchantments you have largely too. I'm a Bosmer NB with crit in the high 70's% and can one/two shot many an enemy.

Just a thought.

killedbyping · September 2014

Is this some kind of joke ?
There is nothing good on Khajiit racials besides 6% weapon crit which is only viable for melee\bow builds.

Reduce stealth detection radius whilst it is alrdy at its max if you wear medium ?
Increase stealth detect radius which is broken and will just yield 0 result vs Medium geared people ?
Increase incombat health regen which 0x9999 = still 0 ?

Most useless race in game imho.

P.S. Medium Armor builds is all about ambush burst damage and crits have nothing to do with that. Ambush have its own crit modifier.

Mondo · September 2014

More Crit DMg when stealth. Forgot about that?

I see 6% Crit and 10% more dmg on first hit, all i need to know

R0M2K · September 2014

jaibierwb17_ESO wrote: »

The abilities point is a good one. Why do class skills (for all classes, but seems to largely affect NBs) such as as assassin's blade scale off weapon damage and weapon crit but use magicka.

Its even worst, class skills scale:

Melee: magicka - spell power - weapon crit
Ranged: magicka - spell power - spell crit

Asssins blade is using spell power, not weapon power.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO · September 2014

Actually Bosners make excelkent NBs too... but they are AD too lol.

As to the stanina magicka issue then stamina actually have the right level of damage output atm... but only for a few seconds. The problem is sustainability, where there are so many magicka recovery items, set bonus and abilities, stamina has almost nothing. So a magicka user can just keep on and on and on.

The logical problems with magicka class abilities can never be fixed until the fundamental system is changed.

If the game had 3 stats that one increased the power of attacks, one gave health and one gave endurance used to fuel your abilities and there were only ONE crit rating all the problems would go away and people would have the freedom you see in other elder scroll games.

But this wont happen as long as the current dev team sits. These guys refused to fix daoc until they moved on to warhammer, where they created the bright wizard.

PS: DaoC got fixed withing 3-5 months after this team left it.

Phinix1 · September 2014

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO wrote: »

But this wont happen as long as the current dev team sits. These guys refused to fix daoc until they moved on to warhammer, where they created the bright wizard.

PS: DaoC got fixed withing 3-5 months after this team left it.

Source? That is incredibly disheartening if true.

Taz07 · September 2014

At the risk of getting shot, they need to revert to something like what the current WoW system is, each class has their own type of resource they use and that attacks base off, and have a separate or completely scrap the stamina dodge/sprint system and make it unlimited.
I just hope they do something before they lose a large sub base and the game goes downhill just months after release like wildstar

Phinix1 · September 2014

Taz07 wrote: »

At the risk of getting shot, they need to revert to something like what the current WoW system is, each class has their own type of resource they use and that attacks base off, and have a separate or completely scrap the stamina dodge/sprint system and make it unlimited.
I just hope they do something before they lose a large sub base and the game goes downhill just months after release like wildstar

I like my ideas in this thread better:

Balance needs to be made a top priority.

Create a new yellow resource called "Endurance" that is used for defensive abilities like block, bash, roll, and break free, and allow one type of armor to be given "affinity points" to inherit a percentage of the effect of the passives from another set of armor.

PlagueMonk · September 2014

Just be thankful you don't like the Lizard (like me).....faster......SWIMMING! yay? and I get more healing when healed? Again blech. I mean they have their place but considering I cannot swim in PvP because there are slaughter fish EVERYWHERE, that pretty much marginalizes that ability.

I would love if, considering Argonians have tough hides, to have innate damage mitigation.....say 5% at lvl 3.

Would also be nice if they got some NB friendly racial like maybe increased sneak speed? idk.

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

Taz07 wrote: »

At the risk of getting shot, they need to revert to something like what the current WoW system is, each class has their own type of resource they use and that attacks base off, and have a separate or completely scrap the stamina dodge/sprint system and make it unlimited.
I just hope they do something before they lose a large sub base and the game goes downhill just months after release like wildstar

I like my ideas in this thread better:

Balance needs to be made a top priority.

Create a new yellow resource called "Endurance" that is used for defensive abilities like block, bash, roll, and break free, and allow one type of armor to be given "affinity points" to inherit a percentage of the effect of the passives from another set of armor.

The problem with your suggestion is, Zenimax, in their infinite wisdom, have already tied each armor type to a stat.

Light - magicka
Medium - stamina
Heavy - health

I have no problem with an end pool that would be used for block, roll break-free, sprinting, sneaking, etc. exclusively. It should be based on the ave of your stamina/health pool and not ties to any armor though.

The only problem in adding a new pool however is the new need to add ways to increase that pool through glyphs and crafting in general. This will be the real headache because it will then compete for those slots you have now dedicated to other things like magicka, health and stamina.

sagitter · September 2014

I have no problem with an end pool that would be used for block, roll break-free, sprinting, sneaking, etc. exclusively. It should be based on the ave of your stamina/health pool and not ties to any armor though.

Or maybe adding a new base pool stat "audacity" that you can increase putting skill points in it like when you level to 49 stam/magkicka/health.

Draxuul · September 2014

I think it makes a a lot of sense to spend magicka to summon a dagger out of thin air before you swing it .

Like the OP said, the skill doesn`t require a weapon to use it . So the weapon pretty much appears in your hand and as far as i know, stamina has never been the resource used to summon anything .

Now it would make sense if they decided to split the cost 50/50 stam/magicka .
Magicka to summon the magic blade and then stamina to swing it .

But then the devs tried their best to offer their players choices and for those choices to have an impact on gameplay rather than simply giving us the illusion of choice and make those choice have no impact .

So classes are not built to rely on just one resource alone to allow the player to choose which direction to take on his own and no matter which direction he decides to take , he`s gonna have class skills available to him.

If NB`s were purely reliant on Stam, they pretty much couldn`t go mage without sacrificing absolutly all of their class abilities . Or else simply accept that whatever class ability they choose to use , it wouldn`t be as efficient as magicka based abilities that they took from non class skill lines.

I`m certainly not a know it all kinda guy, i could be wrong but if i try and put myself in the devs shoes and ask myself why i would split things up the way they did it .

I think my theory makes sense.

Draxuul

guybrushtb16_ESO · September 2014

Taz07 wrote: »

So..im just gonna raise 2 points to see if im the only one who thinks they are a bit stupid.

1) The amount of races NB excel at in a min/max situation = 1. Browsing through the racial bonuses of classes it seems khajiit is ridiculously OP for NBs due to their racial bonuses. They seem to be the only race that gives more than 1 useful bonus specifically for NBs. This wont really annoy most but for players like me that want to min/max the crap outta your toon, it pretty much forces you to run khajiit, and thus if youre not AD already (which i am not) forces you into another faction which has its own apparent problems not being able to do anything else with your guilds (another can of worms i wont open right now that i think is bloody stupid)

This is nowhere near true. First of all, Khajit's boni are only good for melee crit builds, as the stealth bonus doesn't apply to spells. Caster nightblades parse higher dps anyway, but for the sake of the discussion let's say we are looking at melee skill stamina builds.

For this there are 2 strong contenders: imperials and redguards. Granted, red diamond is fluff, but imperials have a combined +22% resource pool, which (assuming you cap stamina first) translates to about +22% health in practice. That is reasonably useful in pve and obviously great in pvp.

Redguard brings all of stamina pool (again, this effectively translates to health), flat stamina recovery (although this is the weakest part here) and their awesome, despite often overlooked unique ability. 3% of their stamina bar every 3s passively is about 24/s at cap, which is about another +60% stamina recovery not subject to caps.

Now how does Khajit compare to that? The big bonus is +10% from stealth, which is nice in pvp, but useless in pve and semi-useful if you do something other than ganking in pvp. But the crit bonus is awesome, right? Well, in reality, at 50% crit chance and 160% crit damage, it's slightly less then 3% on average. And again, that is assuming that 100% of your damage is affected by melee crit, which isn't always true even for stamina builds. And of course, crit in general doesn't work against geared opponents in pvp at all.

Dekkameron · September 2014

Actually i'd say Bosmer were the min-maxers choice of stamina built Nightblades. With Dunmer, Altmer and Bretons leading for the more magicka based ones.

mousekime111rwb17_ESO · September 2014

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO wrote: »

Actually Bosners make excelkent NBs too... but they are AD too lol.

As to the stanina magicka issue then stamina actually have the right level of damage output atm... but only for a few seconds. The problem is sustainability, where there are so many magicka recovery items, set bonus and abilities, stamina has almost nothing. So a magicka user can just keep on and on and on.

The logical problems with magicka class abilities can never be fixed until the fundamental system is changed.

If the game had 3 stats that one increased the power of attacks, one gave health and one gave endurance used to fuel your abilities and there were only ONE crit rating all the problems would go away and people would have the freedom you see in other elder scroll games.

But this wont happen as long as the current dev team sits. These guys refused to fix daoc until they moved on to warhammer, where they created the bright wizard.

PS: DaoC got fixed withing 3-5 months after this team left it.

And the game would be over simplified and many people would quit.

Stx · September 2014

Enough with the 3rd resource pool already... it wouldn't fix anything, and actually help magicka builds in the end.

The only reason magicka builds are so much better currently is because class skills are 10x better than weapon skills, and class skills all use magicka and scale from spellpower. I mean you never really have a choice what to gear for. Even builds that go pure stamina need to stat for spellpower and magicka just for class ability use. If the "melee" class abilities scaled off of stamina, weapon power, and weapon critical, then stamina builds would be insanely better.

As for stamina users having to "share" their resource pool for defensive abilities. That is actually a boon, not a hindrance. Magicka users can only break free twice without running out of stamina, or dodge like 3 times. But stamina users can dodge like 10+ times back to back, and break free at least twice as often. The only problem is, in order for the two stats to be balanced, stamina needs to have twice the natural regen rate that magicka does(like it has in previous ES games), but for some reason ZOS forgot this, so it is currently not so powerful.

Making Heavy armor viable is another matter, and I personally think it has to do with 600 armor/resist enchants being available for jewelry. These should really only be 200ish max, making it harder to cap armor for light users.

reften · September 2014

bosmern_ESO wrote: »

Taz07 wrote: »

So..im just gonna raise 2 points to see if im the only one who thinks they are a bit stupid.

1) The amount of races NB excel at in a min/max situation = 1. Browsing through the racial bonuses of classes it seems khajiit is ridiculously OP for NBs due to their racial bonuses. They seem to be the only race that gives more than 1 useful bonus specifically for NBs. This wont really annoy most but for players like me that want to min/max the crap outta your toon, it pretty much forces you to run khajiit, and thus if youre not AD already (which i am not) forces you into another faction which has its own apparent problems not being able to do anything else with your guilds (another can of worms i wont open right now that i think is bloody stupid)

Someone is forgetting the mighty Bosmer.

We have stealth radius reduction, combat stamina increase and a massive poison disease resistance to shrug off bow users and it increases your max stamina. Most Nightblades rely on stealth movement through cyrodiil and the stamina helps break the CC that other classes get, roll more to dodge and to travel in sneak for longer.

Not only can we sneak longer but we usually get to detect people before they detect us.

Yeah, bad info by the OP. Thanks for posting this.

Taz07 · September 2014

As stated by my second post if u bothered to read, number 1 point is based on an assassin build, to which rolling/dodging etc is useless if you plan to get in and 2 shot someone before they even know what hit them, and for that - 10% damage on first strike and increased crit is far better than any other class

CapuchinSeven · September 2014

Dekkameron wrote: »

Actually i'd say Bosmer were the min-maxers choice of stamina built Nightblades. With Dunmer, Altmer and Bretons leading for the more magicka based ones.

I dunno, when I jump into my magic melee WE NB build, I can still hold 100 stamina regen while sitting at 130 magic regen.

That's in 5 light. Just from being a Nightblade Wood Elf.

That's pretty useful in PVP.

Knootewoot · September 2014

I am a Breton NB and I am OP too. I have extra magicka compared to the other races so i can cast shadow more and Swallow soul. Also i am so damn cute when you look at me you will be paralyzed

TheBull · September 2014

I like how these "Night Blades" use daggers for stat sticks....

Aeratus · September 2014

Khajiit racials are one of the worst. The crit bonus is entirely negated by just 1 piece of impenetrable armor that the opponent is wearing.

Taz07 · September 2014

Err 10% bonus damage from stealth? Yea youre right thats crap for an assassin build, im much better going off for bonus heavy armor

Aeratus · September 2014

Taz07 wrote: »

Err 10% bonus damage from stealth? Yea youre right thats crap for an assassin build, im much better going off for bonus heavy armor

Stealth is totally useless for any high end PVE content, like trials and dungeons. Stealth has a role in PVP, but current PVP favors killing large zergs and stealth won't get you AP faster than non-stealth.

So in the end, the stealth bonus is too situational. Better to get something that is useful in all circumstances, like +magicka or +health.