Wrecking Blow isn't OP. The lack of viable options is.

Alucardo · November 2015

Springt-Über-Zwerge wrote: »

You can always use the first 2 abilites from s&b for singletarget dps which is pretty nice and with light attack weaving its equal to wb dps wise because its not easy to avoid the damage, slow, debuffs and combines with reverbating bash its really effective. but yea I agree there need to be more options for offensive stamina skills

To get the most out of it you really need to weave light attacks, ransack and shield bashing using animation cancelling, otherwise there's no way you're going to out dps someone using WB.
Considering animation cancelling was never intended to be a core combat mechanic, my point stands.

Xsorus · November 2015

Wrecking Blow isn't overpowered

You simply have to look at the fact that Templars and Nightblades don't use it because they have access to abilities that aren't Wrecking Blow.

Alucardo · November 2015

Xsorus wrote: »

Wrecking Blow isn't overpowered

You simply have to look at the fact that Templars and Nightblades don't use it because they have access to abilities that aren't Wrecking Blow.

Yus. That was part of my OP.. they have other abilities to use, whereas DK and Sorc don't.

Angarato · November 2015

add a spammable snare somewhere in your build and wb's only weakness dissapears. leaving a very high damage ability with a cc and a self buff that can be spammed. the range makes up for the wind up and it litterally costs nothing to use. most efficient stamina move in the game. it costs so much more stamina for your enemy to try and avoid your wb than it costs for you to use it.

when you're snared the only thing you can do is:
- casts shuffle which costs alot of stam
- dodge roll through him. costs more stam than wb
- cc him (anyone half decent breaks out instantly cause full stamina since wb spam costs nothing)
- cloak or streak, which sometimes doesnt even work if he's far enough in the wind up it will still hit you
- block it, still taking damage and costs more stam to block than it costs him to wb, losing battle.

Forestd16b14_ESO · November 2015

/reads

....

/drinks

....

This is what yet another response from a nerf WB thread? WB is broken simple as that. Players "dance" as you say and still get hit players dodge still get hit players block and surprise they still get hit and knocked up. WB isn't slow sure says it has a cast time but players have reported of being hit before the animation even of the move hits them. Want WB to be as balanced as you are claiming it to be then ZOS should make it exactly like the NPCs WB were there is a clear cast time of 2 or 3 seconds. Then can you say it's slow and balanced cause how it is now it's the "I win button" just how shield bashing was a week after ESO launched for PC or Templars RD when it was bugged with nirnhoned.

Alucardo · November 2015

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

/reads

....

/drinks

....

This is what yet another response from a nerf WB thread? WB is broken simple as that. Players "dance" as you say and still get hit players dodge still get hit players block and surprise they still get hit and knocked up. WB isn't slow sure says it has a cast time but players have reported of being hit before the animation even of the move hits them. Want WB to be as balanced as you are claiming it to be then ZOS should make it exactly like the NPCs WB were there is a clear cast time of 2 or 3 seconds. Then can you say it's slow and balanced cause how it is now it's the "I win button" just how shield bashing was a week after ESO launched for PC or Templars RD when it was bugged with nirnhoned.

It's a response from a mixture of mediums: forums and in-game.

I'm all for any potential WB bugs being fixed, but people will still complain about this spell. The idea is to try and get users of it to try something new by giving them more options.
Rally is basically a must-have for any stam build. We're talking major brutality, HoT and a burst heal. You've got that, so you look at the list of skills and come across wrecking blow. Well, my stam sorc has nothing else, so I may's well use that. Stam is pretty much FoTM now, so we're seeing an abnormally large amount of wrecking blow because there are simply no other options.
Fix bugs, sure. Nerf? No.

Vangy · November 2015

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

/reads

....

/drinks

....

This is what yet another response from a nerf WB thread? WB is broken simple as that. Players "dance" as you say and still get hit players dodge still get hit players block and surprise they still get hit and knocked up. WB isn't slow sure says it has a cast time but players have reported of being hit before the animation even of the move hits them. Want WB to be as balanced as you are claiming it to be then ZOS should make it exactly like the NPCs WB were there is a clear cast time of 2 or 3 seconds. Then can you say it's slow and balanced cause how it is now it's the "I win button" just how shield bashing was a week after ESO launched for PC or Templars RD when it was bugged with nirnhoned.

Here's an idea. Go make a dk/sorc. Find an experienced pvper. There are quite a few in this thread; the op being one of them. Go try to Wb spam in a 1v1 duel. See how this works out for you. Yes Wb is on my bar and yes so is crit Rush. I open with crit Rush and open with Wb and based on what my opponent does I can tell straight away if he/she is good or a total noob.

If noob: I clip on my nose guard and mash face onto Wb to pwn that noob.

If decent/good: swap to SnB cos Wb isn't going to work.

If ur getting killed in a 1v1 by a Wb spammer you really need to l2p(sry there's no other way to say this). In a 1vx it dosent matter since any high dps skill being spammed by multiple players is going to kill you anyway.

Alucardo · November 2015

Vangy wrote: »

Yes Wb is on my bar and yes so is crit Rush. I open with crit Rush and open with Wb and based on what my opponent does I can tell straight away if he/she is good or a total noob.

If noob: I clip on my nose guard and mash face onto Wb to pwn that noob.

If decent/good: swap to SnB cos Wb isn't going to work.

My DK works the exact same way. If they walk through me or quickly roll dodge, I whip out S+B and go to animation cancelling town.
Sadly S+B doesn't work so well on stam sorc as it does with DK, so I kind of have to put up with it and hope for the best. I swapped Crit rush for stampede because the snare is pretty OP. Hinders their movement quite a lot making it easier to land those blows.

Angarato · November 2015

that moment when your entire death recap is wrecking blows

k2blader · November 2015

Would be nice if destro staff had a WB equivalent.. Mm...Options....

Angarato · November 2015

destro staff has destructive reach. which is what wb should have been. a weak ability with a good cc knockdown. nobody spams it.

change reverse slash/executioner so that its base damage is good. keep the passive on it, change the scaling abit. now you have a nice stam move that you can spam that also acts as an execute below 25ish %

k2blader · November 2015

Angarato wrote: »

destro staff has destructive reach. which is what wb should have been. a weak ability with a good cc knockdown. nobody spams it.

Yeah I agree. I was contemplating, I don't think Zeni can improve the situation without essentially nerfing WB. In that people will keep using WB-- even over other "new/improved" weapon or class abilities-- unless WB ceases to be one of the best abilities to "spam."

shugg · November 2015

How about making giant fist scale off stam, some of us see more benifet from that than lava whip..

Springt-Über-Zwerge · November 2015

Alucardo wrote: »

Springt-Über-Zwerge wrote: »

You can always use the first 2 abilites from s&b for singletarget dps which is pretty nice and with light attack weaving its equal to wb dps wise because its not easy to avoid the damage, slow, debuffs and combines with reverbating bash its really effective. but yea I agree there need to be more options for offensive stamina skills

To get the most out of it you really need to weave light attacks, ransack and shield bashing using animation cancelling, otherwise there's no way you're going to out dps someone using WB.
Considering animation cancelling was never intended to be a core combat mechanic, my point stands.

'Thats true but now it is so everyone can use it which makes it an option

Alucardo · November 2015

Springt-Über-Zwerge wrote: »

'Thats true but now it is so everyone can use it which makes it an option

Just because they couldn't be bothered fixing it doesn't make it a legit technique

Alcast · November 2015

Flurry needs buff....

Sausage · November 2015

Everybody can use WB, and theres I heal, and I block buttons too. I fear for the WB nerf, after its nerfed, theres no reason to dodge roll or block anymore and imho that was how this game was supposed to be. Basically they are turning this game into yet another MMORPG, all what was meant to be cool like dodge rolling and blocking is useless. I bought this game because of dodge rolling and block, theres half million games without them if I wanted to play them.

Btw, when WB is nerfed, bad players are going to jump on Stun/knockback, and we all know it.

Artjuh90 · November 2015

shugg wrote: »

How about making giant fist scale off stam, some of us see more benifet from that than lava whip..

said the same earleyer in this post

RatedChaotic · November 2015

I laugh at wb spammers. They are so easy to counter. L2P noobs.

Sarousse · November 2015

As a stam sorc I have no other viable option than spamming wrecking blow with my 42k stamina.

Until they give us some cool stamina morphs (LoL at Eric Wrobel and his devs for giving us a stamina lighning form as a viable stam morph), we'll be spamming Wrecking Blow. There is actually no other option available.

Blam ZoS PvP devs for not using their brains when thinking about pvp.

Until then... Eat my WB and die.

Kas · November 2015

just make WB and other cast time abilities even stronger and make everything interruptable.
we've had some time to try: cc immunity + breaking as well as movement and positioning just feel shaky at times and thus create all this frustration.

imho i'd now try a game of interrupting.

wrecking blow? make it a serious 1shot candidate if landed vs no block or from stealth. if you face a spammer, just interrupt and win.

steel tornado - cast time and maybe a strong dot effect

jabs/sweeps? interrupt or get wrecked - not cast a damage shield and see the templar hit for a third of the damage now due to bugs.

ritual of rebirth? cast it and get interrupted to be ***, successfully cast it and do a lot more than simply overheal a few allies near you (e.g. store whatever has been healed as battery or damage shield or whatever, just be careful it doesn't become a precast skill)

other strangely strong/highly debated or weak skills? make them super strong but interruptable (maybe even hardend ward).

no idea if it's gonna work but imho instant spells, broken immunity timers and wonky effect ranges have had their chance.

as long as blind skill spamming is the best thign you can do in many situations, people will do it and those killed will be frustrated. this is absolutely not exclusive to WB. jab jab jab, spamm 2-3 shields in succession, surprise attack and even the master weapon builds spamming ransack.

it get's even worse in group combat. in some fights just using self buffs and exclusively pressing steel tornado, BoL or on some builds even purge/clease or maneuver can be close to perfectly playing your role in the fight. Oh how I'd love to see that changed.

Etaniel · November 2015

Alucardo wrote: »

Disclaimer
This post may be kinda long. It contains minor rants, my take on wrecking blow, and some solutions to make stamina builds more versatile. Please, grab a drink and some popcorn while you read.
If you have the attention span of a goldfish, you should probably leave now, but have a nice day all the same.

Right, disclaimer out of the way, let's get into it
You've just obliterated someone with the good ol' crit rush, wrecking blow, executioner combo on your stam sorc and you're feeling good.. and then the salty whispers begin to flood in

"ur just a wrecking blow spammer l2p" - I killed you, twice. Perhaps you should l2p.
"do you know how to do anything but wb omg" - No. No, I don't.
"ur boring and ur play style is boring" - It's pretty affective though, right?
"1000 CPs, WB and no skill m8" - I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you from the ground. Btw, there's a cap now.

Basically I've changed the wording of the whispers I get, but they are pretty close to the real thing and my responses to them.

As the title subtly suggests, Wrecking blow isn't OP, by any means. It's extremely slow, you have to dance around your target to position it correctly, and it's pretty much useless in a 1v1 against someone who knows what they're doing.
It is however dangerous in a group when you're being bombarded by stam sorcs and DKs with wrecking blow. They won't mind playing tennis with your body. But that's the same with every skill.
I mention stam sorcs and stam DKs because they are the biggest offenders. Sure, there are Nightblades and Templars that use it, but not all.. why? Because they have options. A nightblade can make use of surprise attack, and a Templar will jab you to death. Those who don't wish to use their class abilities, will opt for wrecking blow.

Looking at stam sorcs, they have stamina based buffs and some pretty nice passives to help them out, but no offensive skills based on weapon damage/stamina. The most affective skills for them are wrecking blow and steel tornado. What a coincidence, these are the abilities people cry about the most.
Stam DKs are somewhat in the same boat there. Sure, they have stamina based DoTs, but you can't rely on them for damage when things get purged or cloaked in the blink of an eye. A direct damage ability is required. For lack of a stamina whip, they need to rely on weapon abilities, just like the stam sorc. So we're back to the wrecking blow again.
That's a pretty large population of people using this ability, so of course it's going to come across as "spammed" and "OP" when everyone is smashing your face in with this effective skill.
Personally, if you gave me a stam whip, I would kiss wrecking blow goodbye forever. Until then, get rekt.

OK, so I have a couple of solutions, if you will.

Solution Uno - Stam morphs for Sorc and DK DD abilities
For sorc, this could be a stam frag (though I find that idea a little silly). I've always thought a lightning whip would be badass.
For DK, a stam whip.

And that's pretty much it. Obviously details would need to be worked out, but the base idea is that simple.

Solution Dos - Stop making a stams life revolve around 2h
When you think about creating a stamina build, the first thing that pops into your mind is a 2h weapon. Why? Wrecking blow and Rally. This idea is a little more complex than the first, but could provide access to more versatile builds.

1. Add weapon ultimates
2. Increase Mages Guild and Fighters Guild skills by 1.
2.1. Add a skill to the Fighter's Guild at rank 4 that grants Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) and heals you for X every Y seconds (Yes, exactly like Entropy for mages)
2.2. Add whatever skill to Mages Guild to fill in the blank
3. Make some kind of useful DD dual wield skill. Something like base damage with a tiny DoT at the end. Just make it as simple as possible.
4. Amp the damage on Cleave, but reduce the bleeding damage dealt. This skill might actually be useful.

So we've covered a few things in this scenario.

1. Made a brutality buff available to stam builds in the FG tree, so they can gain it easily enough no matter their level or what weapon they use, just like Mages can do now. This might help promote different builds instead of just always relying on a 2h.
2. Added some simple DD abilities to both the 2h and dual wield tree. I'm sure some would find these more useful than the extremely slow wrecking blow. Not all would, but some. The idea is to limit the amount of WB heroes running around Cyrodiil, not annihilate them.

Fin.

First of all , it's effective, not affective. Sorry that just bugs me out when people confuse affect and effect...

Now that that's out of the way....
I don't blame people for using wrecking blow.
I blame how the skill behaves.
If you try to get a heavy attack right after your wrecking blow, 9 times out of 10 you will desync your wb animation and the effect on the target. Meaning your damage will go through, while the target is CCed (he can't see it yet, but he is silenced and can't move) and then the stun hits about 1 second after the damage is already through. Of course, you can't CC break until you see the animation, meaning that a wrecking blow stun leaves you defenseless because there is a 1 second time frame where you can't react. Oh and do I need to tell you that it can cause health desync as well.....

Why some people label this as animation cancelling blows my mind, it's clearly a bugged animation and it needs to be fixed.

Second biggest gripe with this is the range check. The last range check doesn't occur at the end of the animation. From the target's perspective, he is out of range so he doesn't bother to block or dodge, but he still eats that blade to the face. This has happened to me so many times. Either sync the end of the animation with the damage output or get the range check to occur a bit later.

This is why people get so aggravated when they get killed by wrecking blow. And yes, you lack choice, but people wouldn't whisper you so much is the skill wasn't so clunky.

I've been playing stam dk for 2 weeks and this occurs every single day. But of course, from a wrecking blow spammer's perspective, it's only bad for the target.

Lightninvash · November 2015

I AM A GOLDFISH YAY FOR GOLDFISHES TL;DR but I will say I disagree with everything you said

AFrostWolf · November 2015

I feel like light armor is too weak. I play my low level sorc. I don't have any of the shields unlocked yet do stacking isn't an option. It could be PvP lag but most likely is that I suck. I get 3 hit by people using a 2h'er. Stampede, stun them, break free, WB, executioner. I've no time to react I just die now.

I'm using blue armor that is my level and set pieces. The new battle level feels like you have to have purple or gold every level in order to be viable. I know in BWB I seem to kill players that look like they have no CP because their damage with 2h'er is non existant while those that do can pull off a 3 hit combo.

Artjuh90 · November 2015

Kas wrote: »

just make WB and other cast time abilities even stronger and make everything interruptable.
we've had some time to try: cc immunity + breaking as well as movement and positioning just feel shaky at times and thus create all this frustration.

imho i'd now try a game of interrupting.

wrecking blow? make it a serious 1shot candidate if landed vs no block or from stealth. if you face a spammer, just interrupt and win.

steel tornado - cast time and maybe a strong dot effect

jabs/sweeps? interrupt or get wrecked - not cast a damage shield and see the templar hit for a third of the damage now due to bugs.

ritual of rebirth? cast it and get interrupted to be ***, successfully cast it and do a lot more than simply overheal a few allies near you (e.g. store whatever has been healed as battery or damage shield or whatever, just be careful it doesn't become a precast skill)

other strangely strong/highly debated or weak skills? make them super strong but interruptable (maybe even hardend ward).

no idea if it's gonna work but imho instant spells, broken immunity timers and wonky effect ranges have had their chance.

as long as blind skill spamming is the best thign you can do in many situations, people will do it and those killed will be frustrated. this is absolutely not exclusive to WB. jab jab jab, spamm 2-3 shields in succession, surprise attack and even the master weapon builds spamming ransack.

it get's even worse in group combat. in some fights just using self buffs and exclusively pressing steel tornado, BoL or on some builds even purge/clease or maneuver can be close to perfectly playing your role in the fight. Oh how I'd love to see that changed.

typical post from a pvper not thinking about pve.
this makes less build viable which is already a problem and would break pve

Dreyloch · November 2015

Liking the idea of the fighter and mage's guilds playing a part in this. Maybe ZoS could involve a medium-ish difficulty quest to get these skills? Something where you might need to be a certain level and get summoned as you do with the harborage questline? (Actually, that could be a great mechanic for adding new skills to ALL classes. Kinda like a mastery line or something)

I would like to see a stam whip to, because right now there really isn't much damage coming from the sword and board line. Your shield charge isn't doing the damage crit rush is, but is a nice gap closer. Power Bash is pointless in PvP. The heroic generating skill is nice, but terribly weak ST attack. The other one has a small AE componant with morph, but again is kinda weak and does a slow which is either ignored on immunity, or purged off in the ways listed by the OP.The only decent thing in that line is the defensive buff.

If I'm not going to be able to use heavy armor with 2H or DW, and enjoy the weapon damage a medium armor guy has...then I'd like to play as a classic fighter with sword and board and do slightly less damage because of the enhanced defense.Not bottom of the barrel damage, just a bit less than the medium armor beserker guy.

Angarato · November 2015

I would LOVE a rally ability in the fighters guild! that means i can go dw + bow or shield/sword and bow. or even sword/shield and dual wield. actually PLAY AS YOU WANT without being fken gimp.

SneaK · November 2015

Sorry, but WB does need to be looked at.

It's knockdown doesn't grant proper CC immunity and that's why so many people use it. It's pretty close to an exploit if not already one. They need to fix the immunity timer with it or just take the knockdown away.

And I don't believe the root cause of the issue has anything to do with other stamina abilities, as WB is a magicka user's bane, not a stamina user. Stamina users can roll or block WB, magicka users can't continually do this cause of the lack of stamina pool. Several magicka builds have to slot two skills just to combat one (WB). That is a broken mechanic.

temjiu · November 2015

SneaK wrote: »

Sorry, but WB does need to be looked at.

It's knockdown doesn't grant proper CC immunity and that's why so many people use it. It's pretty close to an exploit if not already one. They need to fix the immunity timer with it or just take the knockdown away.

I agreee with the OP's entire statement, but i also agree with this if it's true. WB needs to be in the same pool as all the other CC's, it needs to proc CC immunity if it isn't. It's already potent enough as it is, it doesn't need to be able to bypass the CC mechanic.

I can't say for sure if it does though, I mostly PvE, so I'm on the giving end 99.9% of the time.

On the subject at large....I do agree that Sorc and DK really need more effective stamina morphs. the ones they added to my temp and NB in really enjoying, and it seems fitting that they give all the classes a health mix of stamina morphs. Some ideas:

Crystal Shard - the name sort of befits a "physical" object, even if it costs magicka initially. I think the instacast morph is too important for caster builds (since it procs off of casting), but the AoE morph could easily be changed to a stamina based morph instead, and change it to physical damage or something like that.

Bolt escape is another solid option. use the streak morph and make it stamina based. im sure both magick and stamina builds use this skill, as mobility is critical. I'm also sure that some folks would be unhappy with streak going stamina...but if were adding morphs we gotta put them somewhere.

Same with the Daedric Tomb morph of Daedric mines. the insta cast is perfect for a melee oriented toon, and it could scale with stamina.

Summoning tree is a tough one to convert, but most of those you are toggle anyways, so I don't see the actual summons as an issue. the rest are really magic oriented effects, so we could leave them as is.

Plus the do need to update the DW tree a bit. it was OK when the game came out, but 2h has superseded it with all the buffs it's gotten over time. My personal thoughts? see below:

Twin Slashes - needs higher base damage. The bleed isn't bad at all (especially with the damage morph), but the up front damage is redonkulously meager. it's not even worth using on trash mobs, they die too fast for the DoT to be of value.

Flurry - Yeah, initially it looks allot like a non-AoE version of Shards, for sure. But I wouldn't want another "shard" copy either. So perhaps make this one stay single target, but buff it's damage. perhaps a noticeable increase in damage if you have a bleed on the target? it would pair very well with TS above given that case.

Whirlwind - it's fine, no need to change. One of the better AoE's in the game.

Blade cloak - Aoe only is silly, but 20% straight up DR on everything is a bit over the top, especially given its passive damage boost. drop the DR to 10%, make it on everything, and increase the length of the buff to 20 sec base.

Hidden Blade - Not sure why this gets hate...it has major brutality, same buff as Momentum. but unlike Mom, its an offensive passive (damage + slow on target), whereas Mom is defensive passive (heal). I see HB as in a good spot. It could use a small increase in how long it lasts...10 seconds compared to Mom's 30 is a bit sill IMO. 20 would be OK, but I don't see why it can't be 30 like Mom. Also I would totally love to see it get a gap closer morph, perhaps pulling back to you like the silver bolts from fighter line does. Or, they could add executioner damage to the "ranged" morph, which is silly weak anyways. Give DW a proper execution skill, and a ranged one at that.

exeeter702 · November 2015

So having limited options is overpowered?

You worded your title wrong. Let me fix it for you.

"Wrecking blow itself isn't op, but the lack of options in dealing with it, makes it op."