Misalignment Between Bow Build and Nightblade Skills/Passives

GrumpyDuckling · June 2020

There are some Nightblade skills that align with archer gameplay (Leeching Strikes/Summon Shade), but there are also plenty of Nightblade skills and passives that just don't align well with ranged stamina gameplay:

Siphoning

Drain Power - Access to Major Brutality is gated behind an 8 meter radius and enemy requirement.
Cripple - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.
Strife - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.
Transfer - Passive that grants ultimate for casting a Siphon skill every 4 seconds (hard to find a skill that an archer would effectively spam from Siphoning line).

Shadow

Path of Darkness - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.
Shadow Barrier - Passive that gives Major Resolve lasts about half as long in mostly Medium Armor as Summon Shade (the only skill that reliably aligns with archer from this tree).

Assassin

Killer's Blade - Class execute stamina morph that has a 5 meter range.
Relentless Focus - Stamina morph with a heal that requires being within a 7 meter range of the enemy (this one is particularly silly as there is a short-range requirement for the heal on a skill that has you firing a spectral "arrow").

Also, all 3 class ultimate skills are either melee-range, or are cast on an area around the player. There is no ranged or targeted location option.

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

Taleof2Cities · June 2020

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

I understand that you'd like to see skills and passives tailored to your playstyle, @GrumpyDuckling ... but ZOS has to balance the classes to accomodate everyone's playstyle.

That's why classes are different and why builds have to be constructed to a player's taste.

GrumpyDuckling · June 2020

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

I understand that you'd like to see skills and passives tailored to your playstyle, @GrumpyDuckling ... but ZOS has to balance the classes to accomodate everyone's playstyle.

That's why classes are different and why builds have to be constructed to a player's taste.

@Taleof2Cities I don't fully understand the angle you are trying to take. Why are you attempting to attribute a singular playstyle to me? I have 18 characters with varying playstyles:

5 Tanks
4 Melee
3 Mages/Healers
6 Thematic/Fun builds (that include two archers) mostly used for quick normal dungeon keys and questing

Was I not clear about the point of the post when i said the following?
"It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us."

MindOfTheSwarm · June 2020

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

There are some Nightblade skills that align with archer gameplay (Leeching Strikes/Summon Shade), but there are also plenty of Nightblade skills and passives that just don't align well with ranged stamina gameplay:

Siphoning
Drain Power - Access to Major Brutality is gated behind an 8 meter radius and enemy requirement.

Cripple - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Strife - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Transfer - Passive that grants ultimate for casting a Siphon skill every 4 seconds (hard to find a skill that an archer would effectively spam from Siphoning line).

Shadow
Path of Darkness - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Shadow Barrier - Passive that gives Major Resolve lasts about half as long in mostly Medium Armor as Summon Shade (the only skill that reliably aligns with archer from this tree).

Assassin
Killer's Blade - Class execute stamina morph that has a 5 meter range.

Relentless Focus - Stamina morph with a heal that requires being within a 7 meter range of the enemy (this one is particularly silly as there is a short-range requirement for the heal on a skill that has you firing a spectral "arrow").

Also, all 3 class ultimate skills are either melee-range, or are cast on an area around the player. There is no ranged or targeted location option.

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

I agree that Cripple should have a Disease Morph, but not all skills can cater to what you want. Bow is a very powerful skill line in of itself. Your Spectral Bow gets the heal at close range yes, but to be honest its a reward for putting yourself at risk.

GrumpyDuckling · June 2020

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

There are some Nightblade skills that align with archer gameplay (Leeching Strikes/Summon Shade), but there are also plenty of Nightblade skills and passives that just don't align well with ranged stamina gameplay:

Siphoning
Drain Power - Access to Major Brutality is gated behind an 8 meter radius and enemy requirement.

Cripple - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Strife - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Transfer - Passive that grants ultimate for casting a Siphon skill every 4 seconds (hard to find a skill that an archer would effectively spam from Siphoning line).

Shadow
Path of Darkness - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Shadow Barrier - Passive that gives Major Resolve lasts about half as long in mostly Medium Armor as Summon Shade (the only skill that reliably aligns with archer from this tree).

Assassin
Killer's Blade - Class execute stamina morph that has a 5 meter range.

Relentless Focus - Stamina morph with a heal that requires being within a 7 meter range of the enemy (this one is particularly silly as there is a short-range requirement for the heal on a skill that has you firing a spectral "arrow").

Also, all 3 class ultimate skills are either melee-range, or are cast on an area around the player. There is no ranged or targeted location option.

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

I agree that Cripple should have a Disease Morph, but not all skills can cater to what you want. Bow is a very powerful skill line in of itself. Your Spectral Bow gets the heal at close range yes, but to be honest its a reward for putting yourself at risk.

I did not ask for all skills to cater to what I want. I clearly stated, "It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us."

NyassaV · June 2020

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

I understand that you'd like to see skills and passives tailored to your playstyle, @GrumpyDuckling ... but ZOS has to balance the classes to accomodate everyone's playstyle.

That's why classes are different and why builds have to be constructed to a player's taste.

Magblade used to be able to accommodate multiple play styles fairly well and now it accommodates like... 4 across both magicka and stamina and the rest are trash tier.

MindOfTheSwarm · June 2020

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

There are some Nightblade skills that align with archer gameplay (Leeching Strikes/Summon Shade), but there are also plenty of Nightblade skills and passives that just don't align well with ranged stamina gameplay:

Siphoning
Drain Power - Access to Major Brutality is gated behind an 8 meter radius and enemy requirement.

Cripple - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Strife - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Transfer - Passive that grants ultimate for casting a Siphon skill every 4 seconds (hard to find a skill that an archer would effectively spam from Siphoning line).

Shadow
Path of Darkness - Ranged attack without a stamina morph.

Shadow Barrier - Passive that gives Major Resolve lasts about half as long in mostly Medium Armor as Summon Shade (the only skill that reliably aligns with archer from this tree).

Assassin
Killer's Blade - Class execute stamina morph that has a 5 meter range.

Relentless Focus - Stamina morph with a heal that requires being within a 7 meter range of the enemy (this one is particularly silly as there is a short-range requirement for the heal on a skill that has you firing a spectral "arrow").

Also, all 3 class ultimate skills are either melee-range, or are cast on an area around the player. There is no ranged or targeted location option.

This post is primarily focused on Nightblade archers, but other classes run into similar areas of misalignment between build and class skills. It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us.

I agree that Cripple should have a Disease Morph, but not all skills can cater to what you want. Bow is a very powerful skill line in of itself. Your Spectral Bow gets the heal at close range yes, but to be honest its a reward for putting yourself at risk.

I did not ask for all skills to cater to what I want. I clearly stated, "It would be great to construct builds where we could more effectively utilize many of the skills and passives available to us."

Well, bow gets nice passives to crit (not as much as daggers but still good). Perhaps Assassin's Blade could be ranged on both morphs. This combined with a Disease morph of Cripple and your bow abilities could be nice. Your skill bar could look something like this if it were implemented.

Killer's Blade (now ranged), Cripple (Disease Morph DoT), Poison Injection, Snipe, Relentless Focus, Bow Ult.

Stx · June 2020

It would be very hard to create skills in every tree that become optimal for every archetype of character. Nightblade has quite a few skills that gel nicely with an Archer type character already. I'm not sure changing any of the melee skills would be good for the class overall.

Adding a few more stamina morphs would be nice but remember magicka characters have one dps and one heal weapon line to choose from while stamina has 4 total lines worth of skills.

FrancisCrawford · June 2020

The class that works well for me as bow/bow is warden. There are three damage skills with stamina morphs, none of them melee-only. The pet does some light tanking. There's some healing. There's a nice collection of buffs, debuffs and sustain. Etc.

MudcrabAttack · June 2020

I play Nightblade archer almost exclusively, and you're right, all they can contribute from range is throw dark shade at something and use relentless focus / assassin's scourge. Comparing that to the warden archer or the often clunky Necro bow build, it's less damage output at a ranged position.

But I can't think of any dungeon where I played exclusively from a ranged position. Healers hate it when DPS are standing behind them, they let you die out of spite. And although you could try to avoid attracting attention, archers tend to be a magnet for melee mobs. I usually wind up getting heals from assassin's scourge every time a mob is on top of me, which is nice since I'm usually taking a beating at that point. Dungeon mobs are usually scattered around the place, I'm often using incapacitating strike on something or killers blade, and even power extraction.

Mirage and leeching strikes are on a bar, too. That adds up to more class skills than my Necro uses, it could always be nice to have more ranged options, though.

In practice, my Nightblade tends to outperform the other archer classes I've built up because of the extra burst damage options, resource management, execute and survivability. The way I see it everything comes with tradeoffs. A Nightblade archer in melee range is dealing very decent DPS compared to the other archers, and at range they're at least dealing way more DPS than someone holding a melee weapon.

A boss fight for me generally starts off with Ballista, then a round or two of a rotation from a ranged position, then I would find the right moment to move into melee range to hit the incapacitating strike ultimate for an extra 20% damage boost and either use killers blade to finish off the boss quickly or move back into range for another round of a rotation. Since a lot of boss fights are generally short the dps results are usually higher for the nightblade, especially with bloodthirsty slotted.