Grim Focus/Merciless Resolve/Assassin's Will counter being awkward

Anastian · February 2018

Before I upload a video to show this, I'd like to check if other people have noticed an odd behaviour of this skill and its various morphs (Nightblade).

Before the Dragon Bones patch, the counter on the skill would increase by one each time a light attack was FIRED (example, the tiny fireball from an inferno staff leaves the staff and begins its flight toward the target). After the newest update, I felt like the counter behaves awkwardly: I thought that the game was registering one tick of the counter once the projectile hit the target, but that's not the case. Simply put, the control on when the counter increases is not based on when the light attack is fired but on something else that I have yet to grasp. Has anyone else witnessed this problem? Could we get a reversion of the counter to an increase of 1 every time the light attack is fired, as it feels way more consistent in an already difficult rotation such as the Nightblade's one, where missing one LA or in general having Assassin's Will not firing when it's time greatly reduces our performance?

Vapirko · February 2018

It has to hit the target to register. It’s a little odd. On one hand you have to think less about keeping up the proc and on the other hand it seems a little more clunky and awakard as you say. It’s been dumbed down so that good players won’t see any benefits, perhaps it’s even worse, and bad players will see improvements.

Anastian · February 2018

This makes it extremely difficult to time perfectly a rotation, considering that during a trial / in PvP you are running around avoiding AoEs and stuff (and thus your projectile will hit the target at different times, depending on the distance). Moreover, some staves (fire vs lightning) have different projectile speeds which further complicate matters if you want to perfect your rotation in any situation. Any official response on this?

Sweetare · February 2018

For me it doesnt even register most of the light attacks. I see the LA damage but the counter doesnt move. I can only use the proc about once per cast now. It sucks

Srskitten · February 2018

I have the same issue, but what the last guy said, most of the light attacks that I weave don't even register toward the counter. Most of the times I'll cast it and the counter won't move at all for the entire boss fight while I weave in light attacks. I see it as a loss of dps, they need to fix this, used to be a great skill but now it's useless.

Anastian · February 2018

It's our main source of DPS if we want to achieve some really good numbers, let's be honest.
Let's wait for the update: however I noticed that even light attack weaving is just slightly different. Please, let this concern stay on top of the bug reports as it's kind of ruining a class.
Also, I'd like to add that the issue was found on PC platform, EU Megaserver.

Anastian · February 2018

Up: this is still happening after today's patch. Could anyone else playing a magblade please check this out and help? When do you fire your AW?

Rugosus · February 2018

I'm not super encouraged by the lack of comments ZoS has made concerning this particular issue. There are numerous threads with similar sentiments, so it most certainly is something more than just one or two people are complaining about. If this was intended, you'd think it would have been mentioned in the original Update 17 patch notes. Since it wasn't, I'm lead to believe it was unintended. HOWEVER, ZoS's lack of communication about this post-patch makes me wonder if they are just playing it as if it was intended and as though we should already know this... This issue was originally pointed out as soon as the patch dropped on PTS, yet it still made it to live servers without any sort of hint as to why it is now so different. The only information any patch notes presented was about how they changed stacks so they now persist through although the skill runs out.

It might be beneficial to compile a list of existing threads pertaining to this issue and show that there are more than a few people unhappy with the current state of the skill. I know plenty of people in-game as well who share the same feelings about this, but they don't use the forum. I actually made a forum account specifically because of this issue.

Rugosus · February 2018

Sorry for the double post, but it looks like they've responded to it!

I should've checked the dev tracker today instead of checking individual forums.

So yeah... Sorry ZoS, it's good to hear you haven't forgotten us poor fools fumbling to get AW procs.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/4882971#Comment_4882971

Anastian · February 2018

Noticed as well! This is great news. I was about to learn how to make it proc consistently with the new way procs work but this is definitely a relief.