Wrecking Blow

Lord-Otto · September 2015

*sigh*

So, how much longer are we gonna pretend this skill is not completely overpowered and worse, broken?
Or is there a secret reason why 50% of all incoming attacks are WBs?

Just look at it: as much/higher damage than an ultimate (meteor, for example), can be spammed, little cost with only mediocre gear, uninterruptable, insane cc, cc is even broken and will not always grant cc immunity, and insane range/phantom range. And of course, stamina being already overpowered enough thanks to nirnhoned and useless light armor.
And what are the downsides? 0.8 seconds casting time, that is thanks to lag more like 0.5, which is effectively instant. A supposed cancel by walking through the caster, which is just not doable in 0.5 seconds. That is all.

Alright, I get it, Zenimax, you have to please the little kiddies out there that want a Devil May Cry Online. Cool. But please don't forget there are others out there that enjoy more complex games and are very frustrated about your poor, POOR balancing. And if you think now I have to learn to adapt or play, last campaign was rank 3 for me... If I have to l2p, then may god have mercy upon the other 99%.

Just double the stamina cost - at least. Still fun, still works, less cheesy, and more realistic - it's a two-hander, you just don't swing it like a dagger, and neither has it ever been supposed to.

Turelus · September 2015

*wrecking blows this thread*

Yeah though, might be worth them at least looking at it.

Merlin13KAGL · September 2015

OP, you forgot the 's' in the thread title.

It's definitely still the spam of choice for far too many builds. It's one where consecutive use would probably come with an increasing cost.

I'm not a big fan of doing things this way, but if roll dodging multiple times would take more out of you, I'm pretty sure repeatedly hitting someone with a weapon hard enough to lift them in the air and knock them back 4' would do the same.

Warraxx · September 2015

WB is sooo easy to counter... L2P

Asmael · September 2015

Hum. I have 2 grips with this skill:

1) The chain CC. Yup, I got knockbacked twice in a row. Happened to me a bunch of times, and of course, if you ran out of stamina...

2) When you face multiple opponents and can't really focus on X person using it because Y dude just cast a meteor on you and you're focused on the white circle that says "INCOMING BURST DAMAGE" instead of the guy ready to swing his sword.

In a duel, WB is only good if your opponent doesn't know how to block, or you know (s)he's out of stamina to block or dodge roll. I much prefer fighting people using this than templar's jabs, the multiple hits hurt a lot more and drain much more stamina.

dlepi24 · September 2015

I use a stamina DK (1.6) with 2H and bow. I do most of my attacks with medium bow attacks and poison injection weaves until I can use executioner. If you let me get off a wrecking blow then it's your fault. You can literally walk through me and I won't be able to hit you. It's somewhat easier on PC to land a wrecking blow but on console the camera movement is so slow with analog sticks that you'll spend 5 seconds just trying to land a wrecking blow on anybody that makes use of their build/surroundings. Anytime you see the ridiculously long animation for a wrecking blow you can either walk through them, roll, block or CC them. Nothing is more annoying than to finally get a wrecking blow animation only to get fossilized right before you tee off on their face. However, I don't really need wrecking blow because my light/medium bow and poison injection weaves end up hitting for just as much and I can roll animation cancel them making sure you very rarely land any damage on me (looking at you, Mr. Flame Lash).

Please, just go play with a build that utilizes wrecking blow. You'll find yourself annoyed very often when you just can't connect with one at all. It's the same for every QQ thread. Complain about cloak and you go and play a nightblade. You'll find yourself yelling at the screen saying, "WTF, I hit cloak 5 times and I got pulled out every time." You'll find yourself annoyed when you're BOL away on your sorc and someone keeps gap closing you over and over again and ends up wrecking you because you didn't stack your shields as you ran away. You'll be annoyed when you reflect a meteor only to find out this magical one decided to eat your face instead of reflecting.

TL:DR
Every "OP" skill is only OP when it's being used against you, not when you're using it.

Brantleyx · September 2015

This section, Combat & Character Mechanics is becoming a "Nerf this, Nerf that". Like seriously, They read these threads and take things into consideration.. Wrecking blow is no where near OP. Doesn't need to be nerf, Damn near is the only thing saving DKs. Stop looking complain and dodge it.

leepalmer95 · September 2015

Brantleyx wrote: »

This section, Combat & Character Mechanics is becoming a "Nerf this, Nerf that". Like seriously, They read these threads and take things into consideration.. Wrecking blow is no where near OP. Doesn't need to be nerf, Damn near is the only thing saving DKs. Stop looking complain and dodge it.

Wb isn't a dk skill.

Armitas · September 2015

While walking through is the counter to WB, Snares, Roots, and Back Strafing are the counter to the counter. It's really not that hard to keep an opponent in front of you while your opponent has to drop block to even try to get behind you. WBs are hitting for 14k even with 50% reduction, and it's even easier to weave heavies underneath it now.

zornyan · September 2015

For one, wrecking blow is available to every character in game, it has a long ass wind up, that's easily detectable, all you have to do is walk through/dodge or block.

It's damage is what? 17k for a stam build? What about the 20k crystal frags? Or the 20k snipes?

Seriously it's an easy skill, whats wrong with it? It's counter-able, its slow to use, it's available to everyone, there are many other more powerful skills in the game.

Just tell me this, if wrecking blow is nerfed, what else are 2handed stam builds supposed to dps with? Cleave?

leepalmer95 · September 2015

zornyan wrote: »

For one, wrecking blow is available to every character in game, it has a long ass wind up, that's easily detectable, all you have to do is walk through/dodge or block.

It's damage is what? 17k for a stam build? What about the 20k crystal frags? Or the 20k snipes?

Seriously it's an easy skill, whats wrong with it? It's counter-able, its slow to use, it's available to everyone, there are many other more powerful skills in the game.

Just tell me this, if wrecking blow is nerfed, what else are 2handed stam builds supposed to dps with? Cleave?

They can use more than 1 skill... ever tried wb/heavy weaving?

yodased · September 2015

I think the problem stems from the way CC breaking works and how WB really seems to be breaking the CC immunity functions of the game.

When you get hit with a WB there is a high probability that you will be dead very quickly from the follow up WBs.

Look at other spammable close range DPS:

Whip
Concealed Weapon
Rapid Strikes
Cleave
Jabs (this one is iffy too, but nowhere as bad as WB since nerf)
Steel Tornado
Executioner

These all allow for CC break and if you get "caught" in one of them it's not the "chain reaction" that one WB causes.

You can and will win by spamming the above skills without doubt, but they don't offer the same almost guaranteed kill on one hit that WB does.

Yes i know, walk forward, but that isn't so easy when you are snared or rooted or stunned.

They need to look into the CC immunity timing with WB and it will be fine.

dlepi24 · September 2015

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Brantleyx wrote: »

This section, Combat & Character Mechanics is becoming a "Nerf this, Nerf that". Like seriously, They read these threads and take things into consideration.. Wrecking blow is no where near OP. Doesn't need to be nerf, Damn near is the only thing saving DKs. Stop looking complain and dodge it.

Wb isn't a dk skill.

Clearly he's saying it's the highest DPS for a stamina DK. DK's don't have any significant instant stamina DPS. We have a couple DoT's that can have stamina morphs but we don't have any stamina jabs or surprise attacks. If you want to do any damage you can join the coward nightblades sniping from a bush or you can use wrecking blow and hope the enemy isn't remotely a good player who knows one of the several ways to counter your main DPS. Would you rather us get a wrecking blow off every once in a while or just hold block and whip you to death.

Alucardo · September 2015

zornyan wrote: »

Just tell me this, if wrecking blow is nerfed, what else are 2handed stam builds supposed to dps with? Cleave?

That's a terrible argument. I use a two handed weapon on my 1st bar, bow on my 2nd, and the only ability I use from the 2h tree is Rally.

Kobaal · September 2015

Alucardo wrote: »

zornyan wrote: »

Just tell me this, if wrecking blow is nerfed, what else are 2handed stam builds supposed to dps with? Cleave?

That's a terrible argument. I use a two handed weapon on my 1st bar, bow on my 2nd, and the only ability I use from the 2h tree is Rally.

On my 2h bar, the only skill I dont have is cleave.

Alucardo · September 2015

Kobaal wrote: »

Your making his point for him.

Not exactly. My other stam build is higher up in the AP chain and replaced 2handed with dual wielding and vigor instead of rally. I don't use ANY skills from the dual wield line at all. So that skill tree is useless too?

Merlin13KAGL · September 2015

It's not even about L2P.

Any skill that can be the single spammed major DPS source seems a bit extreme.

Any skill.

The idea was to have people use multiple skills ~ mix it up a little bit, not just use the same attack over, and over, and over, ad infintum.

Holds true for any line, any class. WB just happens to be one of them.

Incidentally, walking through shouldn't be an option. There is collision with NPC's, why would it be any different with PC's. (I realize roll dodge would be the replacement and it could lead to even worse scenarios getting pinned in the environment.)

Perhaps instead of automatically downplaying WB, they should bring the other skills in the tree more in line? Not like other skill lines don't have placeholders of completely useless skills.

Alucardo · September 2015

The thing is, we can't blame these spammers. They were given these tools, and they are effective, obviously. One of the biggest problems I have is after dodging it a few times (which isn't hard to do), I find myself out of stamina. When they realise this the talons come out and it gets spammed even more, so they are just playing hacky sack with my body, and then finish me up with 3 quick executioners.

dlepi24 · September 2015

Alucardo wrote: »

The thing is, we can't blame these spammers. They were given these tools, and they are effective, obviously. One of the biggest problems I have is after dodging it a few times (which isn't hard to do), I find myself out of stamina. When they realise this the talons come out and it gets spammed even more, so they are just playing hacky sack with my body, and then finish me up with 3 quick executioners.

I feel like what you just described is someone outplaying you (not trying to be rude). The object of a battle is to outlast your opponent and normally that's done when you run someone out of resources. As a stamina DK I know that when I fight a sorc I'm not going to out DPS them from range and my only option is to get close to them which normally means I have to go into their mines and take damage. I know that most sorcs don't have a lot of stamina so keeping them CC'd every 6 seconds is the only way I'm going to kill them. I know that usually I'm not going to kill them for at least a minute because they have their initial stam + a tri-pot with a 45 second cooldown. That cooldown window is when they run out of stam and can't break CC and then that's my opportunity to wrecking blow spam without them being able to shield stack. So did I use a cheap skill to kill them? Probably. But I played a game of chess where I waited and managed my resources better than him and because of that he's dead and I'm not.

So, you roll dodging constantly instead of blocking some of the attacks or CC'ing him or BOL/streaking away made you run out of resources. Once you run out of stam as a sorc (or any class really) you're pretty much dead.

Kobaal · September 2015

I run in to Wrecking blow spammer all the time. The same with Templars using Puncturing sweeps over and over and over and over.

Remember in pre IC days where WB would nearly one shot you?

These people are one trick ponies and I have no issues at all dispatching them.

MmmmTofu · September 2015

dlepi24 wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

The thing is, we can't blame these spammers. They were given these tools, and they are effective, obviously. One of the biggest problems I have is after dodging it a few times (which isn't hard to do), I find myself out of stamina. When they realise this the talons come out and it gets spammed even more, so they are just playing hacky sack with my body, and then finish me up with 3 quick executioners.

I feel like what you just described is someone outplaying you (not trying to be rude). The object of a battle is to outlast your opponent and normally that's done when you run someone out of resources. As a stamina DK I know that when I fight a sorc I'm not going to out DPS them from range and my only option is to get close to them which normally means I have to go into their mines and take damage. I know that most sorcs don't have a lot of stamina so keeping them CC'd every 6 seconds is the only way I'm going to kill them. I know that usually I'm not going to kill them for at least a minute because they have their initial stam + a tri-pot with a 45 second cooldown. That cooldown window is when they run out of stam and can't break CC and then that's my opportunity to wrecking blow spam without them being able to shield stack. So did I use a cheap skill to kill them? Probably. But I played a game of chess where I waited and managed my resources better than him and because of that he's dead and I'm not.

So, you roll dodging constantly instead of blocking some of the attacks or CC'ing him or BOL/streaking away made you run out of resources. Once you run out of stam as a sorc (or any class really) you're pretty much dead.

Unlike blocking or dodging, WB is cheaper and has no penalty, so the spammer's stamina would always outlast the blocking / dodging opponent. And by CC-ing it gives the spammer immunity for another few seconds to spam WB, while the opponent gets tennis-ed and sometimes give no immunity.

While I am not crying for nerf myself, I want to point out the obvious: when too many ppl use the same trick, ZOS would most likely tone it down in the future, just like Immovable bathrobe, talon spam, flappy wings, pulsar spam, impen trait stack, nirnhoned stack etc etc

Dyride · September 2015

Stam whip or Stam Crystal Blast and I'll stop wrecking with my wrecking blow. I even use Wrecking Blow on my stamplar sometimes solo.

The chain CC factor is annoying but there are counters.

dlepi24 · September 2015

MmmmTofu wrote: »

dlepi24 wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

The thing is, we can't blame these spammers. They were given these tools, and they are effective, obviously. One of the biggest problems I have is after dodging it a few times (which isn't hard to do), I find myself out of stamina. When they realise this the talons come out and it gets spammed even more, so they are just playing hacky sack with my body, and then finish me up with 3 quick executioners.

I feel like what you just described is someone outplaying you (not trying to be rude). The object of a battle is to outlast your opponent and normally that's done when you run someone out of resources. As a stamina DK I know that when I fight a sorc I'm not going to out DPS them from range and my only option is to get close to them which normally means I have to go into their mines and take damage. I know that most sorcs don't have a lot of stamina so keeping them CC'd every 6 seconds is the only way I'm going to kill them. I know that usually I'm not going to kill them for at least a minute because they have their initial stam + a tri-pot with a 45 second cooldown. That cooldown window is when they run out of stam and can't break CC and then that's my opportunity to wrecking blow spam without them being able to shield stack. So did I use a cheap skill to kill them? Probably. But I played a game of chess where I waited and managed my resources better than him and because of that he's dead and I'm not.

So, you roll dodging constantly instead of blocking some of the attacks or CC'ing him or BOL/streaking away made you run out of resources. Once you run out of stam as a sorc (or any class really) you're pretty much dead.

And by CC-ing it gives the spammer immunity for another few seconds to spam WB, while the opponent gets tennis-ed and sometimes give no immunity.

So.....what you're saying is if you CC him it makes him stop wrecking blow and break the CC and then he gets CC immunity for 6 seconds where he will continue to Wrecking Blow, right? But your method is to not CC him so that he never has to stop what he's doing? Lol, I want to play against a campaign full of people like you. Your logic seems on point.

Kupoking · September 2015

You can nerf it now. I use biting jabs

zornyan · September 2015

So what about
Crystal frags spamming
Biting jabs spamming
Radiant destruction spamming
Surprise attack spamming
Ambush spamming
Flurry spamming
Snipe spamming
Talons spamming

They all ok yeah?

leepalmer95 · September 2015

zornyan wrote: »

So what about
Crystal frags spamming
Biting jabs spamming
Radiant destruction spamming
Surprise attack spamming
Ambush spamming
Flurry spamming
Snipe spamming
Talons spamming

They all ok yeah?

Apart from snipe, they don't even come close to the dmg of wb, which is super annoying to actually dodge as well as buffing itself...

Frags - If you've ever died to someone spamming frags then you need to really work on your build.
Biting is annoying but doesn't come close to the dmg of wb
Surprise attack, again not even close to wb dmg
Ambush, again not even close to the dmg.
Flurry.. lol
Talons, yes it's annoying but atleast it doesn't do 12k dmg

Wb does so much dmg, the cc doesn't work on it, cost little stamina to spam, buff's itself, can't be dodged, you can block but it takes so much stamina and another wb will immediately follow.

Why do people feel the need to defend op skills, don't they want to play the game more interestingly instead of spamming 1 button and spamming 1 op skill and feeling like they are any good when they get a kill.

zornyan · September 2015

Cc has always worked for me, and anyone I use it on, that's simply a bug in general, like how puncturing sweeps can constantly cc you.

12k wrecking blow? What about 20k frags? An ability that is instant cast (when proc) and does nearly twice the damage? That's not Op in comparison no?

There's people hitting 15k biting jabs.

Surprise attack does about 75% of the damage of wrecking blow, yet you can spam it twice as fast, so actual dps is nearly double, then it also decreases the targets armor..

Waffennacht · September 2015

The thing is WB can kill even if it did 50 dmg per attack.

Its the bug that prevents cc immunity that makes wb broken (literally)

The ability is fine, its the bug, fix the bug and wb becomes like any other of the listed abilities

dlepi24 · September 2015

Waffennacht wrote: »

The thing is WB can kill even if it did 50 dmg per attack.

Its the bug that prevents cc immunity that makes wb broken (literally)

The ability is fine, its the bug, fix the bug and wb becomes like any other of the listed abilities

It's not wrecking blow, it's CC/CC immunity in general.

Alucardo · September 2015

dlepi24 wrote: »

I feel like what you just described is someone outplaying you (not trying to be rude). The object of a battle is to outlast your opponent and normally that's done when you run someone out of resources. As a stamina DK I know that when I fight a sorc I'm not going to out DPS them from range and my only option is to get close to them which normally means I have to go into their mines and take damage. I know that most sorcs don't have a lot of stamina so keeping them CC'd every 6 seconds is the only way I'm going to kill them. I know that usually I'm not going to kill them for at least a minute because they have their initial stam + a tri-pot with a 45 second cooldown. That cooldown window is when they run out of stam and can't break CC and then that's my opportunity to wrecking blow spam without them being able to shield stack. So did I use a cheap skill to kill them? Probably. But I played a game of chess where I waited and managed my resources better than him and because of that he's dead and I'm not.

So, you roll dodging constantly instead of blocking some of the attacks or CC'ing him or BOL/streaking away made you run out of resources. Once you run out of stam as a sorc (or any class really) you're pretty much dead.

Kinda hard to do when you fought 8 guys with your team prior to that and Mr Wrecking Blow dismounts with full resources, but yeah.

hardcore_gmr · September 2015

I'm going to go ahead and say that if you get hit by wrecking blow then you definitely deserved to be hit. Its a glorified heavy attack for crying out loud, hell I'd even give the nod to heavy attacks in pvp because at least you have control over the cast time. But wrecking blow can not be canceled, you try to animation cancel wrecking blow it will cancel you attack. Which means from start to finish the caster has to have one of two types of players to have a successful wrecking blow hit, one you have to have a player who reacts to the start of the animation rather than the swing, or two you have to have a player who isn't paying attention to the caster and is busy trying to attack. Both are L2p issues, as both require the player to put themselves right in front of you for 1.3 seconds. Which is an eternity in a fast paced pvp. At best the caster can try to be a little tactical with it to give some variation to this skill by snaring you first, then it could throw off the timing depending on which snare is used. But in all other instances any skill that requires the caster to stand there and hope you are too flustered to notice that they've started charging an attack that is literally a half second shorter than a heavy attack is far from OP. The only real excuse for actually getting hit with this skill is due to running out of stamina, or maybe jumping into you own offense too soon, but these are individual player errors not a design flaw or oversight. Hate to come across rude or disrespectful but these "nerf this" threads are starting to be a real drain on a otherwise engaging community.