Soulac wrote: »

Sacadon wrote: »

Was is not Sage that said, and I'm paraphrasing... "we like that fear is not blockable"? As far as CC's go, it's clearly OP and needs to fall in line with the others. When you look at overall balance, this may be a step back for magicka NBs (if any remain), but that doesn't mean that fear shouldn't fall-in-line with the other CCs. You don't keep a problem in place just because it offsets another issue. My opinion obviously.

- melee range
- immunity if stun breaks and even if you don´t break it
- 1.3 sec GCD on caster on activate
- potion or immovable as viable counters
- not being able to break a stun instantly happen to all stuns, not only fear

NB need to rely on burst, so what should they do against perm block players instead? Dodge until other players join the fight?
You can´t expect every NB to go 0815 sap tank build cause everything else wouldn´t be viable against perm block players.

I hate it if i get feared,not being able to break it in an instant and yes it should get fixed, but fear itself is totally fine.
If you really got problems with fears without the delayed break free it´s just an l2p issue in my opinion. Deal with it as i need to deal with your jesus beam, perm block or streak spam.

Hard to tell whether or not you think fear should honor a 5 second CC immunity or not. ??? BTW, immovable isn't working right in terms of preventing CCs for the first 5 or so seconds.

couldnt cc break fear, rage quit.

Jaerlach wrote: »

you guys are nightblades, so you have disengage and stealth tools. Many classes dont. Blocking everything is their only path to not getting blown up hard.

Which class is it other than NBs that doesn't have access to at least 2 out of the following 3 defensive tools?:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

I'm just curious who these "many classes" are that need to rely solely on blocking everything.

Varicite wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

you guys are nightblades, so you have disengage and stealth tools. Many classes dont. Blocking everything is their only path to not getting blown up hard.

Which class is it other than NBs that doesn't have access to at least 2 out of the following 3 defensive tools?:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

I'm just curious who these "many classes" are that need to rely solely on blocking everything.

Blocking mitigates damage by 60 to 70%. Shields do not benefit from mitigation and heals cant save you when you die during the cast times.

Blocking is a much superior means of mitigating damage and the main viable one for heavy tank builds who get poor resource management from not being in light or medium armor.

Jaerlach wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

The fear problem is twofold:

When you are feared and rooted, you can't run and often continue to display your block animation. This makes it hard to tell you're being cced.

Secondly, during break free you're not blocking. Its quite possible to be instakilled during break free if struck by a couple powerful attacks during the animation.

I understand you'd like to kill feared people, however these issues create a very binary outcome : the fear is either bad or basically instakill you. This isn't particularly fun to play around.


These issues also exist in pve fwiw: fear mobs are the only thing that kills me as a tank in vet vdsa, because two uppercuts can instakill me during break free.

If you could block cancel break free it would play a lot better. You beat block by depleting their stam, and a cc thst goes through block is great for that. In a big fight though it's often just rng, did fear and a big attack hit at once, if yes die.

Good summary.

The binary outcomes of fight is the real rage-inducer. Basically, every nightblade performs the following move set: Stealth --> amush or sneak attack --> wait for opponent to block --> fear --> burst down during the 1-2s window when you can't break free from fear. If your opponent survives the burst, cloak again and repeat. Watch Sypher. Watch any nightblade. Hell, I get wrecked by the these players daily. It is stupid, boring gameplay. There is no L2P issue here.

Finally, fear is an AoE skill! It is so hard to see if you're feared during a group fight or trying to hold a breach or keep.

I mean... you could just CC break. I barely ever get a kill in on players like Ezareth with this, the CC break is nearly instantaneous (which is why I have been skeptical about there actually being a real break free delay instead of just plain old lag).

if you coordinate so you fear people right before major attacks land, you'll find that they die instantly. During break free animation, block is down and it cannot be animation cancelled. This plus slow responsiveness means dead people if you use it wisely and it has no counterplay.

What? How do you come up with this stuff...

The only way you can cause your fear to land before that "major attack" is if you ambush->fear the target after a long range snipe. Even so, this results in around 12-16k burst at most (assuming target doesn't have dmg shield on). So no, no instant deaths.

It has a counterplay: faster reaction time.

You have 1.3 seconds after the fear to break it & start blocking or put some shields on before the NB can do anything.

There are plenty of more broken things in the game, such as Healing Wards eating up 4k weapon dmg Killer's Blades..

Or if you have friends like 95% of pvpers. If you are talking about dueling, I don't even care.

Your group should more or less instakill anyone you fear if you're all competent.

And if you have friends who heal & shield you up, you shouldn't be instakilled while feared.

Unless you expect to solo tank those 15 players focusing on you, without anyone healing or shielding you?


It works both ways.

It only takes 2 or 3. Its quite possible to 100-0 in these circumstances, and if you think it's healthy for the game for tank builds with awful dps to instantly blown up, your vision is provably myopic.


Its not shield spamming resto users arguing with you, it's heavy armor tanks who are totally useless any time enemy nb are smart enough to load mass hysteria.

It was arguably ok when those tanks were 1vX monsters with actual dps, but now they aren't, and fear is still a hard counter they cannoy defend against or avoid.

I wonder if any of you nb arguing here ever played a sap tank in 1.5. Fear is an off switch that instantly turns you from the annoying damage soak you're meant to be to a corpse. Unless you want all pvp to be about glass cannon dps, the current r performance of fear is problematic. It either ruins people or does nothing. Why do you consider that positive?

Good tanks that I know aren't getting blown up by 1-3 people instantly. I dunno what you guys are doing, most players I fight just break CC, and then go back to blocking. Good for them, I'll wear them down. But I rarely see anyone who I know is tanky get blown up that way. Ever. I see fake tanks get blown up that way, like shield stacking sorcs who, when caught without their shields are a 1-2 shot. But that's kind of their bad for being in melee range without shields, so meh.

If your build is so delicate that literally a half second of not blocking means instadeath, you might want to rethink your build.

As for sap-tanks and tanks of that sort, still a valid playstyle. Only unlike in 1.5, you can actually be CCd and killed when you're in the middle of an enemy raid. Like you should be. Stop trying to 1vRaid against anyone who knows what they're doing.

I've not ever had the falling through the world issue from fear. I did assume, however, that it was not breakable. I have not once been able to break it...just have to wait it out. Very annoying. I would attribute this to lag, but I am able to break any other cc without issue.

delete

Sharee wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

you guys are nightblades, so you have disengage and stealth tools. Many classes dont. Blocking everything is their only path to not getting blown up hard.

Which class is it other than NBs that doesn't have access to at least 2 out of the following 3 defensive tools?:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

I'm just curious who these "many classes" are that need to rely solely on blocking everything.

Blocking mitigates damage by 60 to 70%. Shields do not benefit from mitigation...

I see this argument a lot, and it is misleading.

Shields indeed do not benefit from mitigation. But shields also make you immune to crits.

If a NB attacker has 100% crit chance, this means your shield takes ~40% less damage from his attacks than naked HP would at all times. That is basically ~40% mitigation.

More realistic scenario, if that NB has only 50% crit chance, that still translates into an average 20% 'mitigation' for your shields.

Except when the base hit of the ability breaks the shield, then it not only crits just fine, it so completely bypasses whatever mitigation your armor provides as well as other damage reducing defenses. There are plenty of players able to 1-hit shields and those same players who are already the most dangerous can now crit your health as if it were a damage shield. This forces a shield stacker to continuously recast his shields at even the slightest damage less he get 1-2 shotted by a single player.

Additionally a player behind a damage shield is forced to block on top of his damage shield absorbing damage to avoid being CCed by several abilities. A shields inability to be crit has several tradeoffs that balance that out. Not everyone is running around with 50%+ crit either as weapon damage is by far cheaper and more effective.

Ezareth wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

you guys are nightblades, so you have disengage and stealth tools. Many classes dont. Blocking everything is their only path to not getting blown up hard.

Which class is it other than NBs that doesn't have access to at least 2 out of the following 3 defensive tools?:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

I'm just curious who these "many classes" are that need to rely solely on blocking everything.

Blocking mitigates damage by 60 to 70%. Shields do not benefit from mitigation...

I see this argument a lot, and it is misleading.

Shields indeed do not benefit from mitigation. But shields also make you immune to crits.

If a NB attacker has 100% crit chance, this means your shield takes ~40% less damage from his attacks than naked HP would at all times. That is basically ~40% mitigation.

More realistic scenario, if that NB has only 50% crit chance, that still translates into an average 20% 'mitigation' for your shields.

Except when the base hit of the ability breaks the shield, then it not only crits just fine, it so completely bypasses whatever mitigation your armor provides as well as other damage reducing defenses. There are plenty of players able to 1-hit shields and those same players who are already the most dangerous can now crit your health as if it were a damage shield. This forces a shield stacker to continuously recast his shields at even the slightest damage less he get 1-2 shotted by a single player.

Should we start balancing around bugs, then?

Varicite wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

you guys are nightblades, so you have disengage and stealth tools. Many classes dont. Blocking everything is their only path to not getting blown up hard.

Which class is it other than NBs that doesn't have access to at least 2 out of the following 3 defensive tools?:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

I'm just curious who these "many classes" are that need to rely solely on blocking everything.

Blocking mitigates damage by 60 to 70%. Shields do not benefit from mitigation...

I see this argument a lot, and it is misleading.

Shields indeed do not benefit from mitigation. But shields also make you immune to crits.

If a NB attacker has 100% crit chance, this means your shield takes ~40% less damage from his attacks than naked HP would at all times. That is basically ~40% mitigation.

More realistic scenario, if that NB has only 50% crit chance, that still translates into an average 20% 'mitigation' for your shields.

Except when the base hit of the ability breaks the shield, then it not only crits just fine, it so completely bypasses whatever mitigation your armor provides as well as other damage reducing defenses. There are plenty of players able to 1-hit shields and those same players who are already the most dangerous can now crit your health as if it were a damage shield. This forces a shield stacker to continuously recast his shields at even the slightest damage less he get 1-2 shotted by a single player.

Should we start balancing around bugs, then?

Judging from what I've seen you guys shouldn't be balancing around anything...

I was only pointing out that the implied "Mitigation" provided by damage shields is offset by the existing design of damage shields. The way damage shields currently work is a "Bug" if you want to look at it that way. The complete lack of any physical mitigation, the bleed effect, and the inability to block to reduce damage actually gives a NB an overall increase in damage in most scenarios when attacking damage shields. It is only when they can't break through them at all that it is more effective...but only slightly.

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

The fear problem is twofold:

When you are feared and rooted, you can't run and often continue to display your block animation. This makes it hard to tell you're being cced.

Secondly, during break free you're not blocking. Its quite possible to be instakilled during break free if struck by a couple powerful attacks during the animation.

I understand you'd like to kill feared people, however these issues create a very binary outcome : the fear is either bad or basically instakill you. This isn't particularly fun to play around.


These issues also exist in pve fwiw: fear mobs are the only thing that kills me as a tank in vet vdsa, because two uppercuts can instakill me during break free.

If you could block cancel break free it would play a lot better. You beat block by depleting their stam, and a cc thst goes through block is great for that. In a big fight though it's often just rng, did fear and a big attack hit at once, if yes die.

Good summary.

The binary outcomes of fight is the real rage-inducer. Basically, every nightblade performs the following move set: Stealth --> amush or sneak attack --> wait for opponent to block --> fear --> burst down during the 1-2s window when you can't break free from fear. If your opponent survives the burst, cloak again and repeat. Watch Sypher. Watch any nightblade. Hell, I get wrecked by the these players daily. It is stupid, boring gameplay. There is no L2P issue here.

Finally, fear is an AoE skill! It is so hard to see if you're feared during a group fight or trying to hold a breach or keep.

I mean... you could just CC break. I barely ever get a kill in on players like Ezareth with this, the CC break is nearly instantaneous (which is why I have been skeptical about there actually being a real break free delay instead of just plain old lag).

if you coordinate so you fear people right before major attacks land, you'll find that they die instantly. During break free animation, block is down and it cannot be animation cancelled. This plus slow responsiveness means dead people if you use it wisely and it has no counterplay.

What? How do you come up with this stuff...

The only way you can cause your fear to land before that "major attack" is if you ambush->fear the target after a long range snipe. Even so, this results in around 12-16k burst at most (assuming target doesn't have dmg shield on). So no, no instant deaths.

It has a counterplay: faster reaction time.

You have 1.3 seconds after the fear to break it & start blocking or put some shields on before the NB can do anything.

There are plenty of more broken things in the game, such as Healing Wards eating up 4k weapon dmg Killer's Blades..

Unless I'm mistaking your point, GCD is 1 second. I was able to cast exactly 40 Hardened wards in a row in 40 seconds using a timer. You can also animation cancel light attacks as well. I know several NBs who can 2 shot me with an ability followed by a Soul Harvest/incapacitating strike....and that is *with* a full shield up.

GCD is 1.3 seconds, maybe it is less for dmg shields (wouldn't really surprise me).

As for two shotting people, I do that all the time (though with a different combo). I doubt you can two shot a decent sorc who keeps his shields up with a Soul Harvest->X combo, but if that is the case I'd like to see footage of that.

All I know is that you can spam Killer's Blades (hardest hitting execute in game) with 4k weapon dmg (yes, of course weaving in LA & bash even), and be unable to get through Healing Wards. This is much, much more broken than something that has a clear counter: having a better reaction time.

Yep, you are right. ZoS made the global cooldown the same for all spells EXCEPT damage shields just because they knew how much you like them.

And, yes, we all agree that the ability to heal yourself at low damage is clearly "broken." ZoS please fix.

Varicite wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Varicite wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

you guys are nightblades, so you have disengage and stealth tools. Many classes dont. Blocking everything is their only path to not getting blown up hard.

Which class is it other than NBs that doesn't have access to at least 2 out of the following 3 defensive tools?:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

I'm just curious who these "many classes" are that need to rely solely on blocking everything.

Blocking mitigates damage by 60 to 70%. Shields do not benefit from mitigation...

I see this argument a lot, and it is misleading.

Shields indeed do not benefit from mitigation. But shields also make you immune to crits.

If a NB attacker has 100% crit chance, this means your shield takes ~40% less damage from his attacks than naked HP would at all times. That is basically ~40% mitigation.

More realistic scenario, if that NB has only 50% crit chance, that still translates into an average 20% 'mitigation' for your shields.

Except when the base hit of the ability breaks the shield, then it not only crits just fine, it so completely bypasses whatever mitigation your armor provides as well as other damage reducing defenses. There are plenty of players able to 1-hit shields and those same players who are already the most dangerous can now crit your health as if it were a damage shield. This forces a shield stacker to continuously recast his shields at even the slightest damage less he get 1-2 shotted by a single player.

Should we start balancing around bugs, then?

Judging from what I've seen you guys shouldn't be balancing around anything...

I was only pointing out that the implied "Mitigation" provided by damage shields is offset by the existing design of damage shields. The way damage shields currently work is a "Bug" if you want to look at it that way. The complete lack of any physical mitigation, the bleed effect, and the inability to block to reduce damage actually gives a NB an overall increase in damage in most scenarios when attacking damage shields. It is only when they can't break through them at all that it is more effective...but only slightly.

The overflow damage is most likely a bug.

The other effects are by design, at least the other effects have been somewhat acknowledged by ZOS, while there hasn't seemed to be a response about overflow damage at all.

Thus, I'm going to continue looking at it as a bug until they say otherwise.

The overflow damage bug (which I talked about in depth earlier in this thread) as well as the other mechanics of shields have absolutely nothing to do w/ NBs. They give EVERY physical DPS this same overall increase in damage, I'm not sure why you are focusing on NB in this regard.

Well, other than bias, I suppose.

A poster stated that classes other than NBs need to rely on block to mitigate all of their incoming damage, and my reply was simply that every class that isn't a NB already gets access to at least 2 of the following tools:

1) Class shield
2) Big heal
3) Escape tool

Yes, shields have some issues that need to be looked at. That's not in question.

However, there is not a single class that is forced to rely 100% on shields to mitigate incoming damage. It is a combination of mitigating / defensive / escape mechanics that makes up a class' potential to survive.

Clearly, no class is forced to rely solely on blocking (which Fear counters), just as no class is forced to rely solely on healing or shielding themselves for survival.

If you hit the little "show previous quotes" link in the thread that you quoted you'd see that I was replying to this:

Sharee wrote: »

If a NB attacker has 100% crit chance, this means your shield takes ~40% less damage from his attacks than naked HP would at all times. That is basically ~40% mitigation.

Actually I think damage shield impact NBs slightly more than other classes which is why Sharee chose them for her example. Bonus Crit and Bonus crit damage makes attacking a class with damage shields less effective for many nightblades. I was only commenting to counter the argument that damage shields are providing some form of "Mitigation" because they can't be crit. It could go either way depending on who is attacking with what ability and I feel it is fair to say that damage shields provide No Mitigation without being dishonest.

I had a TS conversation with Eric Wroebel on this bug and others relating to Damage shields and I got the impression they aren't happy with a host of issues caused by them and they would like to completely redesign them. This naturally concerned me so I just dropped the subject at that point.

I think damage mitigation and avoidance are closely related and Nightblades have the best damage avoidance in the game and the second best Escape.

As far as the whole class heals and damage shield conversation I think Night blades have their own unique and extremely powerful defenses when played by a skilled player. With medium armor and a stamina build, dodge rolling allows them to completely *avoid* a large portion of damage relatively inexpensively. They can remove dots with Dark Cloak and it also acts as projectile avoidance. They also have some of the highest passive resistances in the game while dodge rolling and cloaking (And champion passives even increase this further). A Magicka nightblade has some amazing self-heal and sustain abilities in Sap-Essence, Leeching strikes, and swallow soul in addition to fear spam. Both avenues are extremely powerful when played by a competent player but NBs are probably the most difficult class to play effectively so most of them that you see in Cyrodiil are bad.

DDuke wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

DDuke wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

Jaerlach wrote: »

The fear problem is twofold:

When you are feared and rooted, you can't run and often continue to display your block animation. This makes it hard to tell you're being cced.

Secondly, during break free you're not blocking. Its quite possible to be instakilled during break free if struck by a couple powerful attacks during the animation.

I understand you'd like to kill feared people, however these issues create a very binary outcome : the fear is either bad or basically instakill you. This isn't particularly fun to play around.


These issues also exist in pve fwiw: fear mobs are the only thing that kills me as a tank in vet vdsa, because two uppercuts can instakill me during break free.

If you could block cancel break free it would play a lot better. You beat block by depleting their stam, and a cc thst goes through block is great for that. In a big fight though it's often just rng, did fear and a big attack hit at once, if yes die.

Good summary.

The binary outcomes of fight is the real rage-inducer. Basically, every nightblade performs the following move set: Stealth --> amush or sneak attack --> wait for opponent to block --> fear --> burst down during the 1-2s window when you can't break free from fear. If your opponent survives the burst, cloak again and repeat. Watch Sypher. Watch any nightblade. Hell, I get wrecked by the these players daily. It is stupid, boring gameplay. There is no L2P issue here.

Finally, fear is an AoE skill! It is so hard to see if you're feared during a group fight or trying to hold a breach or keep.

I mean... you could just CC break. I barely ever get a kill in on players like Ezareth with this, the CC break is nearly instantaneous (which is why I have been skeptical about there actually being a real break free delay instead of just plain old lag).

if you coordinate so you fear people right before major attacks land, you'll find that they die instantly. During break free animation, block is down and it cannot be animation cancelled. This plus slow responsiveness means dead people if you use it wisely and it has no counterplay.

What? How do you come up with this stuff...

The only way you can cause your fear to land before that "major attack" is if you ambush->fear the target after a long range snipe. Even so, this results in around 12-16k burst at most (assuming target doesn't have dmg shield on). So no, no instant deaths.

It has a counterplay: faster reaction time.

You have 1.3 seconds after the fear to break it & start blocking or put some shields on before the NB can do anything.

There are plenty of more broken things in the game, such as Healing Wards eating up 4k weapon dmg Killer's Blades..

Unless I'm mistaking your point, GCD is 1 second. I was able to cast exactly 40 Hardened wards in a row in 40 seconds using a timer. You can also animation cancel light attacks as well. I know several NBs who can 2 shot me with an ability followed by a Soul Harvest/incapacitating strike....and that is *with* a full shield up.

GCD is 1.3 seconds, maybe it is less for dmg shields (wouldn't really surprise me).

As for two shotting people, I do that all the time (though with a different combo). I doubt you can two shot a decent sorc who keeps his shields up with a Soul Harvest->X combo, but if that is the case I'd like to see footage of that.

All I know is that you can spam Killer's Blades (hardest hitting execute in game) with 4k weapon dmg (yes, of course weaving in LA & bash even), and be unable to get through Healing Wards. This is much, much more broken than something that has a clear counter: having a better reaction time.

Yep, you are right. ZoS made the global cooldown the same for all spells EXCEPT damage shields just because they knew how much you like them.

And, yes, we all agree that the ability to heal yourself at low damage is clearly "broken." ZoS please fix.

Oh the heal part is fine.

The hardest hitting execute in game with 4k weapon dmg only taking around 80-90% of a shield? Not so fine.

Basically getting down to 20% health means you can go into an immunity mode (against single NB), even if he actually has the execute slotted & is focused around weapon dmg (not stamina regen).

And no, fear doesn't help there, unless the sorc is very slow with reaction time.

What helps is cloak->wombo combo for an instagib, and that's about it.

It will only take a single Healing ward to put the Sorc back into non-execute range from healing ward. If cast at 20% Health it can heal for 2K and shield for 16K. That is the sole reason a player is probably using a Resto staff and it should be very powerful. The tradeoff other than costing you a weapon slot is spamming healing ward will run you out of magicka much faster than hardened ward.

Reaction times dont matter when dealing with fear, sometimes you can't break free for 1-2 seconds if at all.