On my NB from stealth i have zero issues with bow or DW killing sorcs if i have the jump. With bow they are usually before they even know what hit them,

morvegil wrote: »

So im a 2H weapon with Bow spec.

I ambushed a guy, then funnled health...then he streaked out. I was stunned, he nukes...I stampede to him...minimal damage if any...he streak again..nukes..blah blah blah

I did 500 the whole fight...

I dont get whats going on here? It seems to be a re occurring theme...even if I get the jump on a sorc or someone they make take 800ish damage and then block and heal and nuke...

The guy even had the nicety to msg me "you'll never kill me with that build".

SO i guess I need to spec staff? WTF? It seems a melee NB is just a dumb idea.

I put down my 2h'r the first week of 1.3. When the magicka caps were raised it made it impossible to breakdown a sorc shield. It's a shame too, because 2h is arguably the highest burst stam weapon.

edit- I went full magicka for the first time at the start of the most recent Thorn campaign. It's rediculous how much more powerful a vamp magicka NB is compared to a WW stam NB. Endless batswarm ftw, well for the bored... So bored with that meta, I haven't played but 20 mins the past 5 days...

I'm very similar to you. VR13, 2H/Bow. Some builds I can kill very quickly others, like the type of Sorc you describe or the standard DK, I won't kill.

I try this type combo > Lethal Arrow > Heavy/Poison > Switch, Stampede > Fear > Executioner. Will leave some dead, if not, Dark Cloak, and dodge my arse out.

Try dropping the 2H for DW and Magic. Cap your magic at around 2400-500 and get your magic damage up as high as possible. A mundus like more magic or high crit damage will help. I don't run it but the Stygian set will give you another +20% from stealth damage.

DW means you'll have +5% damage, +7 spell damage (from a 2 item set) and +10% penetration. No staff needed, although I often run a resto staff as my other weapon for the heals and shields, it's useful in a group to help heal and useful for getting your wounds patched up (High Elf staff looks like a spear, low level looks best but high level is passable) but that's up to you, I've sometimes used a shield instead.

A combo something like, Ambush - Soul Harvest - Impale. Or, Ambush - Surprise Attack - Surprise Attack - Impale; should see off most targets and those you don't beat in the first pass, you'll have enough magic to hopefully get away and try again. You might consider adding in Expert Hunter as well if you're coming across a lot vampires, you'll hit for another 500+ damage in a magic capped build.

In fights where you need a little survivability try, Ambush - Swallow Soul (after an Ambush with + 30% damage you should have a heal ticking for around 150) - Surprise Attack - Impale.

Hope this helps.

*NB high five*

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

Try dropping the 2H for DW and Magic. Cap your magic at around 2400-500 and get your magic damage up as high as possible. A mundus like more magic or high crit damage will help. I don't run it but the Stygian set will give you another +20% from stealth damage.

DW means you'll have +5% damage, +7 spell damage (from a 2 item set) and +10% penetration. No staff needed, although I often run a resto staff as my other weapon for the heals and shields, it's useful in a group to help heal and useful for getting your wounds patched up (High Elf staff looks like a spear, low level looks best but high level is passable) but that's up to you, I've sometimes used a shield instead.

A combo something like, Ambush - Soul Harvest - Impale. Or, Ambush - Surprise Attack - Surprise Attack - Impale; should see off most targets and those you don't beat in the first pass, you'll have enough magic to hopefully get away and try again. You might consider adding in Expert Hunter as well if you're coming across a lot vampires, you'll hit for another 500+ damage in a magic capped build.

In fights where you need a little survivability try, Ambush - Swallow Soul (after an Ambush with + 30% damage you should have a heal ticking for around 150) - Surprise Attack - Impale.

Hope this helps.

*NB high five*

Still implies the stam builds are gimped against certain builds.

What are magicka builds gimped against, other magicka builds?

ESO has lost and will continue to lose subs over this. Trouble is, that since they've let magicka do this since day 1, anyone who has stayed will then probably leave if magicka is no longer all powerful.

I've played a stam build since day 1. Dislike the concept and visuals of magicka/class abilities, apart from concealed weapon.

Why must I conform to a magicka build? oh yes, L2P.

good news on this folks and fellow nightblades, this is a copy paste from a statement just made by paul sage that is coming to patch 1.5.0 and will most certainly effect all nightblades.

-Paul Sage
quote:
ZOS has to balance making players stronger with providing an ample challenge to players. This means a complete re-balance of game and ability mechanics is necessary.
end quote:

that to me is an admitance that they know thier is a class imbalance im both survivability and also damage output.
this is great news and we should hold him to his words that there will definately be retooling to balance the classes.

here is the link to where his entrie statement can be found.
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/1300559/#Comment_1300559

and just incase you prefer to read it for yourself here instead of going to that link then i will copy paste the entire conversation right here on this thread as it is definately relivant.

here below was the comments made today on this 10/01/2014

AvA Questions

Can resources be made more strategically valuable?

They have discussed this internally in terms of having the resources have a bigger impact on the strength of the keeps that they are associated with.

Will Emperorship ever be a reflection of true “leadership” rather than pure rankings?

This was discussed pre-launch, but the best call for launch ended up being to go with the leaderboard based option.

Separating siege items in Cyrodiil from the potion/food quickslot menu?

Brian will bring it up with the UI folks.

Possibility of increasing the radius of defense ticks?

This varies on a keep-by-keep basis based on where the resources are next to them. The areas would need to be “re-painted” which could be problematic if the larger areas collide with the defense areas of the resource nodes.

Forward Camps, their role in Cyrodiil, how they are being changed?

They are nerfing them first, and possibly removing them later.

Alliance Point progression and their role in character development. How will AvA contribute to character depth, additional skills, gear in the future.

Basically, there are no plans currently to expand the role of AP and AvA progression.

What is the incentive to owning all the Imperial City districts, are there large end bosses of the districts or in the sewers?

There’s not a huge incentive to owning the IC districts at the moment other than having access to the respawn point. They are looking into options of how to better reward the alliance that controls each district. Access to crafting set stations and other amenities might be access gated.

Player motivation for participating in the Imperial City vs. Cyrodiil proper? What rewards are there for players? What about alliance ranks after 24?

They are looking into expanding the alliance skill lines to include additional abilities as well as possible alliance rank dependent tiers of gear, but there is some concern that this approach would be too elitist favoring hardcore PvPers too much.

Will they add new ways to level up quickly to PvP?

XP has been tweaked up for player kills to 4x monster kills, the daily kill quest was changed because of the way players were gaming the system. All of the experience you can gain within the Imperial City is set to a high multiplier.

Do siege weapons work in the IC/Sewers?

No, these are for mainland Cyrodiil only.

Exploitation, emperor farming, lag, disconnects, and crashes in Cyrodiil have frustrated a lot of players into quitting the game. How are you working to address these issues and handle them quickly as they emerge in the future?

A lot of time when we (ZOS) see those behaviors they try to take private (not public) action to correct them. Hopefully improved channels of communication with player groups can help identify these problems faster in the future.

Possibility of dynamic population locks to try to keep the three sides more even?

They have talked about doing some stuff like that but no plans are currently in place.

Improving the single-player PvP experience, ganking supply lines, checking out quest hubs, dungeons, etc.. How do you plan to address this, and how do you see the Imperial City affecting this.

There aren’t any specific plans to add single-player only content at this time, but hopefully they can address that player group in the future.


Champion System and Future Veteran Experience

At this point Paul Sage took over assisted by Maria Aliprando to discuss the future roll of veteran systems and advancement with the new Champion System.

The Champion System

We can’t just put the Champion System on top of the current advancement system. -Paul Sage

ZOS has to balance making players stronger with providing an ample challenge to players. This means a complete re-balance of game and ability mechanics is necessary. Current granularity of stats does not fit well with the addition of small percentage bonuses. Adding a 1% bonus on top of a base level of 40 isn’t meaningful to the player. Simply adding points to soft-capped abilities would be bad.

Benefits of the Current Systems

Helps to prevent “bad builds”
Freedom of how to play – allows players to go over limits

Problems with the Current System

Trade-offs are not pronounced
Too easy to hit soft caps
Balance is harder

Solutions:

All your character’s stats, attributes, and damage values will be multiplied by 10 (for example, a Health of 2,500 would become a Health of 25,000). This will allow small percentage bonuses to realize a visible impact on your character’s stat lines.
Soft caps are being removed entirely.
Impose some limits – for example, Armor (Physical resistance) caps out at 50% mitigation. On live right now, this would equate to roughly 3,000 armor.
Each source of benefit to a certain stat has it’s own caps. For example, buffs, equipment, traits, and more will each have their own independent maxima to contributing towards the overall limit.
Once these changes are in place, the numbers in abilities, items, enchantments, weapons, etc… will all need to be changed.
Compute rate limits (DPS and damage prevention)
Adjust NPC and monster stats and abilities

What does this mean?

You’ll have to make commitments to be the best in a particular area.
More varied builds, better interdependence between builds.
Some abilities will have to change, i.e. armor buffs won’t stack
Itemization will be much more important.
The dynamics of combat will change, particularly at max-level.

System Rebalance Questions

How will the de-composition of stat caps vary by class which have access to different ranges of buff abilities?

The composition of the cap composition will not change by class, so it will not be possible for everyone to max out everything. Certain classes may have a slight advantage at reaching the theoretical maximum in certain areas.

When might we see this?

“When it’s ready”. It’s too hard to put a firm date on this right now given the scope of these changes.

How will more casual players react to the scope of these changes?

We hope that the way these changes are constructed will make character construction feel more meaningful and significant, so some things will be different, for example light armor wearers will probably feel a bit more squishy in the new system, but by the same token heavy armor will feel more significant. The changes are making trade-offs more meaningful.

What kind of challenges will this system involve for educating players on where their stats are coming from and helping them understand how the new system works without having to show them a PowerPoint presentation?

The reality is that most players don’t really care too much, and they simply trust that their stats are adding naturally. This will actually be a fairly natural system since the caps in place prevent you from ever getting “too much” of a certain stat.

Champion System

Maria Aliprando took over diving into the details of the champion system, a new account-wide system that allows your characters to evolve and progress past level 50. You spend champion points in nine constellations. All characters on your account get the benefits you have earned, but your points can be spent on a per-character basis.

Champion experience is earned through regular XP, so it’s very transparent and the system makes sense.
Earned veteran ranks will convert into champion XP, but there will be a maximum on the amount that will be allowed to convert.
All characters on your account get the benefits you have earned.
You will be able to respec your choices regarding how you spend the champion points.
Update 5 will reduce the passive stat boosts from veteran ranks, but grant attribute and skill points for the player to choose how to spend.

The champion system will be introduced, and at first both the Champion and Veteran systems will co-exist for a short time, with the ultimate goal of replacing Veteran entirely. In update 5, Veteran Ranks will be converted from VP to XP, so experience points will be the currency for character advancement throughout.

You will spend your champion points in any of 9 constellations:

Health (Warrior, Lord, and Lady)
Magicka (Mage, Ritual, and Atronach)
Stamina (Tower, Lover, and Thief)

Each time you spend a champion point, the constellation “rotates” and you must spend your next champion point in a tree belonging to the next type. This doesn’t force you into a particular gameplay style, however, as there are nodes relevant to every possible playstyle in each of the three constellation branches.

Each constellation has certain passive bonuses that you will unlock once you have invested a threshold number of points into that constellation. For example, putting 10+ points into the Atronach constellation gives you an additional bonus named “Merchant’s Favor”. If you spend 100 points in The Lord constellation you earn Last Stand, which grants increased ultimate when you fall below 20% Health. There are special passive unlocks at 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 point investments.

The bonuses themselves are minor in isolation, but collectively will make a significant difference to your character. For example, Stout in the Warrior tree reduces the duration which the player is stunned.

Each individual Champion bonus can have up to 700 champion points applied to it:

We envision it will take you about an hour to earn a champion point – Paul Sage

A big concern of the champion system is to prevent it from creating a huge separation between players who have earned a lot of champion points and those who have not, both in terms of power and in terms of potential.

Champion points are more meaningful in the beginning of the system – the value of each champion point degrades as you invest further into a specific skill. For example, the first point you spend in Light Armor gives you a +1.0% bonus to armor, but the 40th point only gives you +0.1%.
This encourages players to diversify their points towards the beginning of earning Champion points.
This prevents players who come late to the system from being irrecoverably far behind veteran players.
There is a new system, called Enlightenment, which boosts the experience earned towards a champion point. Your account accumulates Enlightenment as long as you have a level 50 character. This prevents there from being a penalty from playing low-level alts. Your level 50 main will earn Enlightment during that time. Additionally, this will help out players who don’t have as many hours per day to play ESO. Taking time away from doing XP granting activities to craft, roleplay, or just hang out won’t penalize you too much because you will earn Enlightenment during that time helping you get your next champion points more quickly. Seems like it functions similarly to “rested XP” in other games.

Champion System Questions

How do you plan to handle content gating using the new system and how players will know which tier of endgame content is appropriate for them?

The details of this are still being brainstormed, but some ideas that might happen include some sort of “champion rating”, increased character levels, or some other sort of indication to the player as to what they should be working on.

With this paradigm shift to a more horizontal based progression system, what are the implications for Cadwell’s gold/silver as well as the vertical progression structure which currently exists in veteran dungeons and trials?

We (ZOS) are leaning heavily towards getting rid of the barrier between gold/silver content and giving the player the choice at 50 to tackle that content in any order they choose. As for veteran dungeons, these will be able to be scaled to your party’s desired level. In terms of trails, we’ll be sticking with a vertical progression model in terms of trial difficulty and itemization, but trying to keep an easier on-ramp for players wanting to get started.

What is your stance on the visibility of champion levels, do you want a character’s champion progress to be public knowledge?

We’re playing with different sets of iconography to represent a character’s Champion achievement visually within the UI. There’s a lot of potential also for Champion Ratings as a composite statistic based both on their champion rating as well as the attribute levels of an enemy.

Princess_Asgari wrote: »

On my NB from stealth i have zero issues with bow or DW killing sorcs if i have the jump. With bow they are usually before they even know what hit them,

I'm one of the Sorcs which get killed by you guys everytime I enter a battle, many thanks.. XD

But seriously, as a sorc, I don't have a real chance in Cyrodiil (besides of the horrible fps drop on my end which prevents me from at least dogde if not dealing damage). It still feels like my VR11 is still as weak as a VR1.

I just notice this was offtopic and not about NB's.
Well, I gave up my NB (melee) months ago since it didn't work out at all. I'm still wondering how I ever could defeat Molag Bal with that build. Next thing I'll try is a DK.

The only way to kill a sorc with 2H is a sneak attack him with Wrecking Blow.
With Decent gear Wrecking blow sneak attack deal over 3k damage which is mostly 1 shot to any non heavy armor enemy or atleast big enought damage to finish im off with Executes.

However, it is more like a luck. In real PVP action you probably wont be able to do this trick on any1 who is not afk or at siege weapon.

Other tactics with 2H just fail to kill any1 unless he wield 2h too.

BTW if you wanna be succesful you need both sources Magicka and Stamina. Best way is go full Magicka and put an Single Stamina Skill in your line. In my case its flurry. If i lag Magic or enemy blocks i use flurry and reg magic full then he is *** ^^ just my 2 cents

Heh, I /laugh and /spit all the time after I kill someone 1v1. Especially when its one of those filthy Standard and Talons spamming DKs.

If you are playing a stamina NB burst build the only magicka skills you should rely on are Cloak and possibly Mark Target for certain styles.

Koensol wrote: »

kitsinni wrote: »

If you are playing a stamina NB burst build the only magicka skills you should rely on are Cloak and possibly Mark Target for certain styles.

And of course impale. Impale is always good.

Fair enough even with gimped magicka it is pretty good. I would use it with a melee setup but not bow.

Also I would add in a PvP build don't go for crit just forget about it. Even at 67% crit I can count on one hand how many times in a night I will crit in PvP. Unless something changes with Impenetrable don't even bother. The random person that isn't stacking impenetrable will probably be easy to kill either way.

DDuke wrote: »

Not really... if you're soft capped with weapon dmg & stamina, Flying Blade will deal more dmg than impale, even at execute range.

Only one catch with that, DKs can reflect FB back at you. Whereas Impale is considered a melee skill and it is not reflected.