Some Rotation + Survivability questions for console

nihirisutou · January 2018

Hi ya'll,

So I have been playing the game for a couple of months, I have multiple toons (described in my signature) but I struggle much with creating a working rotation.

I understand the effects of the skills of the classes I play, but I struggle with staying alive and damage (the most on my Night Blades).

Now I mainly watch Deltia and Alcast for builds/rotations and I get what they're aiming at, but that is on PC and the arrangement of where the abilities are allocated do not make sense to me and are not comfortable at all. How do you fellow console players deal with this?

For example, often see a spammable skill located in the 2/3 slot, for a PC player ( This would 'W' or 'E', if I'm not mistaken) but on console this would be 'Triangle/Y' or 'Circle/B' making them personally far more awkward than any of the other buttons.

Beardimus · January 2018

I think it's personal preference.

What I do is to keep the same buttons for like skills. I.e. My Sorc ward button is my templar's heal. Or AOE is same on all builds or slill to buff (major sorcery etc)

Which goes where is personal I think. But for a rotation i generally work clockwise around with my thumb so sequence the skills in the rotation

Nestor · January 2018

First, Nightblades are the trickiest class to play, and the hardest to keep alive. About all you got is a weak stamina based siphoning skill until you have Vigor. So, that is your next goal, go do some PvP until you can unlock that.

Me, I gave up after 2 years of trying to make a Stamina NB work, I respecced him back into Magic and I am having more fun with him now.

As for skill slots. All I know is I would have holes in my walls with remains of controllers sticking out of them if I had to play this game on console. From my limited experience, there are 3 buttons that are easy to reach, and two that are not. I guess you have to figure out what skills are the most used in your rotation, and what two are the ones you can put on the more difficult buttons to get to.

Also, developing a rotation does not mean copying it from some streamer. You run into the issues you are running into now. Plus, what works for one, does not work for others. Instead, pick skills that make sense to you as you play. Like you might want more crowd control before you drop your damage. Or, if you choose a skill that buffs the next one, pick the next skill that benefits most from that buff. I do get advice and ideas from Streamers, but I never follow them.

As I set things up, this is what I do, and, yes, it's for PC

1. Opener Buffer skill
2. DoT or Buff Skill
3. Damage Skill
4. Damage Skill
5. Recovery or Shield skill

I apply this to any skill for any character class or build.

Loc2262 · January 2018

I agree with Beardimus and Nestor!

I play on PC, and have remapped the skill keys to Q-2-3-E-F, since those are easier to reach with less finger movement than 1..5. Also I try to have similar functions on similar keys on my chars. Backbar F is usually a buff. Backbar Q and 2 are single-target DOT and ground AOE. Frontbar F is the main spammable, frontbar Q is the execute. Frontbar E is direct damage AOE. Etc. pp.

Magicka Nightblade has much much better survivability than stamina, due to shield and two strong on-damage self-heals (Swallow Soul and Sap Essence). SS is a HoT, and SE even does some small heal when you don't damage anything. But most important is the shield. As long as you have magicka, you can slap on a 15k shield at any time which essentially adds to your health. Additionally MagNB has a magicka based 3 second stealth which you can spam for quite a while. When the stealth is active, you can literally move through mobs and they don't see you. I often do that do get through the mob groups in public dungeons or delves when I'm too lazy to fight them.

nihirisutou · January 2018

Nestor wrote: »

First, Nightblades are the trickiest class to play, and the hardest to keep alive. About all you got is a weak stamina based siphoning skill until you have Vigor. So, that is your next goal, go do some PvP until you can unlock that.

Me, I gave up after 2 years of trying to make a Stamina NB work, I respecced him back into Magic and I am having more fun with him now.

As for skill slots. All I know is I would have holes in my walls with remains of controllers sticking out of them if I had to play this game on console. From my limited experience, there are 3 buttons that are easy to reach, and two that are not. I guess you have to figure out what skills are the most used in your rotation, and what two are the ones you can put on the more difficult buttons to get to.

I play other classes as well, but to be honest I find NB much more rewarding to play, I find my Mag/Stam sorc quite repetitive gameplay. I understand their Rotations but it is really just: Crit Surge + Hurricane + Endless Hail/WoTE - bar swap - deadly cloak/lightning splash - whirlwind/the lightning execute forgot its name. Like that kills basically anything I run into.

But that gets repetitive so quickly.

Nightblade is so much more punishing, but I feel like I am dying more than I should because of the layout. Like I wish I could respec my button layout to personal preference rather than three given templates.

Nestor wrote: »

Also, developing a rotation does not mean copying it from some streamer. You run into the issues you are running into now. Plus, what works for one, does not work for others. Instead, pick skills that make sense to you as you play. Like you might want more crowd control before you drop your damage. Or, if you choose a skill that buffs the next one, pick the next skill that benefits most from that buff. I do get advice and ideas from Streamers, but I never follow them.

As I set things up, this is what I do, and, yes, it's for PC

1. Opener Buffer skill
2. DoT or Buff Skill
3. Damage Skill
4. Damage Skill
5. Recovery or Shield skill

I apply this to any skill for any character class or build.

I don't copy paste completely, I just look at their builds/rotations and notice that the way they structure their rotation on buttons to create a logical order, but that is not similarly comfortable on console at all. Weapon swapping is a pain...

Loc2262 · January 2018

For survivability on a stam NB, until/if you don't have Vigor, you can use a two-hander. You have a small heal-over-time there (Rally) and a shield (Brawler) that gets stronger the more enemies you hit. Or use dual wield and make sure to morph Twin Slashes and Flurry to the healing variant. Also the execute Killer's Blade heals you. The bow also has a healing attack (Draining Shot).

For most of that stuff, you need to damage enemies to get heals/shield, that's the Nightblade play style.

nihirisutou · January 2018

Loc2262 wrote: »

For survivability on a stam NB, until/if you don't have Vigor, you can use a two-hander. You have a small heal-over-time there (Rally) and a shield (Brawler) that gets stronger the more enemies you hit. Or use dual wield and make sure to morph Twin Slashes and Flurry to the healing variant. Also the execute Killer's Blade heals you. The bow also has a healing attack (Draining Shot).

For most of that stuff, you need to damage enemies to get heals/shield, that's the Nightblade play style.

I never had Vigor and it's a priority now. I realize that. Any tips on unlocking it fast in PvP?

Loc2262 · January 2018

Fastest is probably if you happen to be in a guild that does organized PVP runs. I personally dislike PVP in this game and thus have to rely on groups to carry me.

Otherwise, you could enter Cyro, type LFG in the zone chat, wait for an invite and run with the group. And hope they manage to capture some keeps. Once they do, make sure to repair walls/gates since that gives some nice extra AP. You can buy the material for that from some NPC in the keep. If you get really lucky, you get some 20k AP in half an hour, but you can also spend hours riding and getting killed and get just a few k AP.

The latter is the reason why so far only one of my five stam chars has Vigor and Caltrops.

sudaki_eso · January 2018

I agree with Beardimus, its pretty much personal preference. As a ps4 player myself i have the most used skills on square, triangle and circle, and healing or buffs on L1 or R1.
When it comes to rotation its attack -> square -> attack -> triangle > attack cirlce -> attack L1 -> bar swap and start over. depnding on your class it may differ but thats the basic idea.

Weapon swapping is a pain...

you have two options, you can change the controller setup in the game to see if the alternate controls better fits your needs or you remap the bar swap button inside the ps4 settings to a different button. there are also some controllers out there with some extra buttons.

By the way, it will get better the more you play, i switched so many times into first person mode when i started here, it still happens but it gets better

kylewwefan · January 2018

You can go into the PS4 controller settings and change the left D-Pad with the Right thumb stick click. This is the best trick I’ve found for weapon swap/crouch. A real game changer.

I keep my rotations circular that fits me, left to right. I don’t like using the r1 because it’s trigger finger, so inner light works good there. I usually keep buff or heal on the L1, so is good for Vigor or relentless or Crit surge.

The order you execute skills makes a significant difference for rotations. So, square triangle circle works for me. You gotta find what’s comfortable for you and arrange them so it’s easy enough to replicate over and over.

Rotations are quite a bit different than regular button mashing. It feels like work at first, but then gets more rewarding when your damage potential skyrockets.

nihirisutou · January 2018

sudaki_eso wrote: »

I agree with Beardimus, its pretty much personal preference. As a ps4 player myself i have the most used skills on square, triangle and circle, and healing or buffs on L1 or R1.
When it comes to rotation its attack -> square -> attack -> triangle > attack cirlce -> attack L1 -> bar swap and start over. depnding on your class it may differ but thats the basic idea.

Weapon swapping is a pain...

you have two options, you can change the controller setup in the game to see if the alternate controls better fits your needs or you remap the bar swap button inside the ps4 settings to a different button. there are also some controllers out there with some extra buttons.

By the way, it will get better the more you play, i switched so many times into first person mode when i started here, it still happens but it gets better

I am sorry if this sounds newby as hell, but PS4 settings where in-game or general settings? Because that would be a huge deal for me to get things going.

Vaoh · January 2018

I’m on PS4 NA. Seems like your main issue is getting comfortable.

When I first started, my spammable Force Pulse was placed on R1 (right bumper) which caused lots of issues as I improved and wanted to weave in light attacks.

You will want to slot your spammable on L1 (left bumper). The way you hold your controller naturally makes it the easiest way to go about spamming a skill+weaving light attacks with ease.

Of course this is my own personal preferance. Try every button and see what is most comfortable for you! I also use Controller Button Layout B - the layout where left on D-pad switches your weapons.

sudaki_eso · January 2018

nihirisutou wrote: »

I am sorry if this sounds newby as hell, but PS4 settings where in-game or general settings? Because that would be a huge deal for me to get things going.

dont worry, its a bit hidden, this will help: https://www.howtogeek.com/245977/how-to-remap-buttons-on-your-playstation-4s-controller/

nihirisutou · January 2018

sudaki_eso wrote: »

nihirisutou wrote: »

I am sorry if this sounds newby as hell, but PS4 settings where in-game or general settings? Because that would be a huge deal for me to get things going.

dont worry, its a bit hidden, this will help: https://www.howtogeek.com/245977/how-to-remap-buttons-on-your-playstation-4s-controller/

Found it!

Thanks a bunch for the answers, I swapped the weapon switch button and I immediately notice the difference. Decided to invest in upgrading my gear with glyphs and jewelry which helped with the survivability too.

I did very embarrassingly die at the Goblin King on Stros M'kai while getting used to the swapping though.