thedude33 wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

As mentioned earlier in the thread you generally have two choices:

Troll King - seriously this is the best choice hands down, you just can't beat raw healing % with CP's - your resists stop mattering when your hp hits 0, so making sure your hp doesnt hit zero > resists

Bloodspawn - I'd move to bloodspawn once you've mastered the class / resource management of the class - you can pressure test yourself with Veteran Maelstrom.

I don't care what a single PVP'er says, there is no better pressure test for whether or not a person can play their class than Veteran Maelstrom. You need kill speed, you need defense, you need self healing, all things you need to learn to do well in PVP, If you can't do those things in PVE, you can't do them in PVP, or maybe you can do them OK in PVP, because your major focus is PVP, but you can't define yourself as good or top tier.

These are obviously my opinions, but I think they make sense logically and you'd be hard pressed to formulate an argument to the contrary.

Damn, now I really feel bad. I've only dabbled with Maelstrom on regular level. Got frustrated on round 7 and haven't been back. Maybe that's why I'm so bad

Keep practicing it until you get better. I beat Vet Maelstrom the 1st night I tried it, with no rune help except on the final boss. It took me about 6 hours of hard play, tooling my build, re-adjusting. Lots of frustration. I went through a *** ton of pots.

But, I log-in and run Vet Maelstrom once a week now and always leaderboard. This past week I scored a 498k. It's not that great, some people push 600k. But, it's good enough for me to not have to invest a *** ton in my PVE build, I get to use a build I like (Elegance + Mechanical Acuity + Illambris).

I think this is really lost on a significant number of the ESO population, I don't know what's causing it, I think it's also just society in general right now. But, getting frustrated and quitting instead of sticking it out is going to make it impossible for you to ever get better.

Keep trying! Don't give up! Beating Vet Maelstrom is super satisfactory and the weapons are dope.

MalagenR wrote: »

thedude33 wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

As mentioned earlier in the thread you generally have two choices:

Troll King - seriously this is the best choice hands down, you just can't beat raw healing % with CP's - your resists stop mattering when your hp hits 0, so making sure your hp doesnt hit zero > resists

Bloodspawn - I'd move to bloodspawn once you've mastered the class / resource management of the class - you can pressure test yourself with Veteran Maelstrom.

I don't care what a single PVP'er says, there is no better pressure test for whether or not a person can play their class than Veteran Maelstrom. You need kill speed, you need defense, you need self healing, all things you need to learn to do well in PVP, If you can't do those things in PVE, you can't do them in PVP, or maybe you can do them OK in PVP, because your major focus is PVP, but you can't define yourself as good or top tier.

These are obviously my opinions, but I think they make sense logically and you'd be hard pressed to formulate an argument to the contrary.

Damn, now I really feel bad. I've only dabbled with Maelstrom on regular level. Got frustrated on round 7 and haven't been back. Maybe that's why I'm so bad

Keep practicing it until you get better. I beat Vet Maelstrom the 1st night I tried it, with no rune help except on the final boss. It took me about 6 hours of hard play, tooling my build, re-adjusting. Lots of frustration. I went through a *** ton of pots.

But, I log-in and run Vet Maelstrom once a week now and always leaderboard. This past week I scored a 498k. It's not that great, some people push 600k. But, it's good enough for me to not have to invest a *** ton in my PVE build, I get to use a build I like (Elegance + Mechanical Acuity + Illambris).

I think this is really lost on a significant number of the ESO population, I don't know what's causing it, I think it's also just society in general right now. But, getting frustrated and quitting instead of sticking it out is going to make it impossible for you to ever get better.

Keep trying! Don't give up! Beating Vet Maelstrom is super satisfactory and the weapons are dope.

It took me 3 years, on and off, to beat vMA. Saying you beat it in 6 hours is, honestly, just bragging about your aptitude for this game, even if you're not going for high scores.

I find the only "dope" weapon for solo / small-scale PvP is the resto staff these days and maybe, just maybe, the 2H. In terms of PvP weapons, I'd rather have a selection of Master weapons instead.

Datolite wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

jaime1982 wrote: »

Hmmmmmm, 19khp stamblade. My stamplars favorite

Well, honestly, I find templars the easiest class to counter on a nightblade. Drop the shade. Sprint / dodge roll a little further. Port back. Cloak. This gets you out of the jabs snare.

If by counter you mean run from, sure. As magplar the only time I get killed by stamblades is when I'm fighting someone else. ;P

That's a fair response, but when you're caught in that 70% Sweeps snare, that's what kills you and that's how you get out of it. Normally I think the NB would do everything to avoid getting caught in the first place. The snare is applied by the final hit, I believe, so a stamblade would tend to dodge roll beforehand and try to approach you at a different angle, while a magblade would probably try to control you with Cripple.

I just don't think the class is meant to be much of a brawler. You're best off building with a bit of mag to give yourself more stealth and doing what NBs do best: ganking.

I broadly agree. Especially if you play other classes, then I think playing as a ganker makes sense. It's what makes NB distinct. If I wanted to brawl, I'd use a different class. However that doesn't mean you can't make, for example, a tanky 1H+S stamblade or a duelling-spec ranged magblade without cloak, as I see a few people doing that.

More to the point, I have seen stamblades brawl. It's just you have to be really good for that. I specifically remember a stamblade from my own faction surviving in the middle of a 3-way brawl on a flag in IC and wondering how he did it. I later faced him with my other faction character and noted him using Eternal Hunt, as well as being adept at mixing dodge rolls with cloak and the shade. I don't think he was particularly tanky, but he was very, very good at avoiding damage, as borne out by an inspection of my combat logs.

I see nightblades as gankers in so far as they usually don't apply constant pressure, but they attempt to burst you, whenever they have Incap ready. To be fair, other classes also go through attack / buff cycles, but it's more extreme with nightblades, as they can choose to back off in cloak, where other classes can't. Many nightblades leave time between what you might call a series of ganks. The really good ones, though, can seamlessly mix up their playstyle without ever really backing off.

fred4 wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

thedude33 wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

As mentioned earlier in the thread you generally have two choices:

Troll King - seriously this is the best choice hands down, you just can't beat raw healing % with CP's - your resists stop mattering when your hp hits 0, so making sure your hp doesnt hit zero > resists

Bloodspawn - I'd move to bloodspawn once you've mastered the class / resource management of the class - you can pressure test yourself with Veteran Maelstrom.

I don't care what a single PVP'er says, there is no better pressure test for whether or not a person can play their class than Veteran Maelstrom. You need kill speed, you need defense, you need self healing, all things you need to learn to do well in PVP, If you can't do those things in PVE, you can't do them in PVP, or maybe you can do them OK in PVP, because your major focus is PVP, but you can't define yourself as good or top tier.

These are obviously my opinions, but I think they make sense logically and you'd be hard pressed to formulate an argument to the contrary.

Damn, now I really feel bad. I've only dabbled with Maelstrom on regular level. Got frustrated on round 7 and haven't been back. Maybe that's why I'm so bad

Keep practicing it until you get better. I beat Vet Maelstrom the 1st night I tried it, with no rune help except on the final boss. It took me about 6 hours of hard play, tooling my build, re-adjusting. Lots of frustration. I went through a *** ton of pots.

But, I log-in and run Vet Maelstrom once a week now and always leaderboard. This past week I scored a 498k. It's not that great, some people push 600k. But, it's good enough for me to not have to invest a *** ton in my PVE build, I get to use a build I like (Elegance + Mechanical Acuity + Illambris).

I think this is really lost on a significant number of the ESO population, I don't know what's causing it, I think it's also just society in general right now. But, getting frustrated and quitting instead of sticking it out is going to make it impossible for you to ever get better.

Keep trying! Don't give up! Beating Vet Maelstrom is super satisfactory and the weapons are dope.

It took me 3 years, on and off, to beat vMA. Saying you beat it in 6 hours is, honestly, just bragging about your aptitude for this game, even if you're not going for high scores.

I find the only "dope" weapon for solo / small-scale PvP is the resto staff these days and maybe, just maybe, the 2H. In terms of PvP weapons, I'd rather have a selection of Master weapons instead.

The Resto staff is nice. I have builds that use the frost staff backbar for BGs and open world CP PVP. I wish I could get the lightning staff. The inferno staff is awesome. I am only stating the facts of what it took me to accomplish VMA to provide perspective. I don't think that anything I did was special besides making sure I appropriately prepared my builds, allocated my CP correctly, read the guides, and challenged myself from the beginning to do it without the support buffs so that I could learn the fights almost mechanically.

My ability to do it the 1st night has more to do with my experience gaming in general (15 yrs) and the fact that I appropriately prepared for it.

Ha! Then I dare say, since ESO is my first and only MMO, I beat you by about 12 years. I feel better, now.

uhhhh I guess that's how you could look at it haha

@Solidus2, you got me experimenting with stamblade. I wanted a build that would optimize dodge roll sustain, just to see what that's like. I therefore went with all medium, all Well-Fitted Impregnable Armor, 3x Swift stamina cost reduction jewelry, paired with Blood Spawn or Troll King and Steed mundus. To be extra nasty, I'm currently trying Fasalla with that. Your raw damage goes way down, but the idea is that you stack the defile from Incap or Reverb Bash with Fasalla and you have the speed to stay on top of people and keep that set activated. Bear in mind I'm a CP player, but in that environment this build is proving very tanky / brawly and a lot of fun. When I get focused, I start rolling / sprinting and, eventually, I cloak. I have not even levelled Shadow Image on this character yet.

I lost some duels against good players, but in the middle of BG sized brawls in IC, with not so good ones, this feels great. The drawback to this build, which I hadn't realised, is the large hit you take to your (burst) damage, which makes it ineffective against shielding magsorcs who couldn't care less about the defile. Fasalla is also wasted on magplars who are wearing Pirate Skeleton. This is not the end of the road, just a different direction to explore. I've been using 1H+S and 2H. I wanted to try Gryphon for even more attacking speed, but thought better of it when Steed + 3x gold Swift felt good already. I went with Fasalla partially because the gold jewelry was available for cheap and you really want gold when playing around with Swift or Infused.

Solidus2 wrote: »

Now that my character is fairly developed (DW/2H stamblade, full sets, skillset, practice), I've been running BG's quite extensively.
I'm about 8 levels into the pvp skill lines, 400,000 AP, couple dozen BG's. I'm wearing full Impen, 14k mag, 19k health, 32k stam. That changes to about 22k health, 29k stam in BG's with no CP and various pvp buffs. I also feel like the matching system is working fairly well in general, other than a few outlier crazy players / META cheesers.

I really want to enjoy BG's, but unless there is some crazy elite player carrying the team, it's utterly frustrating and enraging.
After 4 or 5 BG's, I typically have to just rage quit from frustration as a melee character. Pick a target, try to get in close, spend about 6 seconds rooted (or snared to such a degree I may as well not even move), and get AoE'd down hopelessly. I blow stamina trying a roll dodge, only to continue to be snared? Break free, but the animation takes so long, I'm melted anyway? My unstoppable potions give me 8 seconds of freedom...sometimes?

There's really no way to play a melee DD in PvP?

Let me be clear - I have great success with this build when there is a single player or two, and it becomes a fight involving DoT's, HoT's, roll dodges for burst avoidance, all of the skillsets of PvP. But in the fray of BG's, melee simply can't do anything? Unless you're a hulking tank build of some sort? I watch ranged characters sit back at a safe distance unloading entire rotations, compared to the hopeless panic of breaking free and rolldodging in melee. I try to pick these guys off as a melee, and the snaring and CC'ing joy makes it just damn impossible.

Is this a thing? Is there some way to make this work?

Not read the thread, just your post and i hope in the thread there's some build advice as i think you need some adjustment. Stamina PvP is very strong. And conversly to your point the things you talk about are harder for a ranged / magika build.

You think you have stamina issues, imagine having 14k Stam like alot of Mag players do and how long that lasts for CCs / break free / roll dodge.

Likewise the CC and AOE to death generally comes from Stamina builds in my book.

Hopefully people have support you through your setup. Skills and how to motivate damage etc.