One shot one kill build (extremely gimmicky)

ExistingRug61 · September 2020

This post was inspired by the the "Elephant Gun" discussion by @xxslam48xxb14_ESO
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/545234/help-with-an-experimental-build-elephant-gun
which discussed coming up with a build capable of dealing damage large enough to take down even somewhat tanky players in one to two shots using snipe.
One difficulty established in this discussion was that often it took two hits to kill players, and landing the second snipe was quite challenging.

So, the purpose of this post was somewhat as a thought experiment to see what could be achieved in a single hit, thus removing the enemies ability to react if you take them by surprise.

Basically, this is done by exploiting simmering frenzy. I had previously looked at whether frenzy could be sustained indefinitely in the PvE context (see https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/547278/sustainable-simmering-frenzy-in-markath-theorycraft-build#latest), and then tried to see if the same could be achieved in a PvP environment. Obviously this is much more difficult, due to the -60% healing due to battlespirit. Also, where my PvE concept relied on damage through attacking (and crutching on the new Ring of the Pale Order), this wouldn't be possible if the idea was to make a single surprise attack. Instead, I looked to see if frenzy could be sustained by heals until ready to take that one shot.

The resulting build is here:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=277999

General idea:
1) Be near a keep (required for the healing bonus, otherwise healing will be insufficient) with 500 ult.
2) Activate Frenzy
3) Sit on the back bar and cycle through Healing Ward>Regen>Vigor>Dark Conversion. I think this should be (just) enough heals to sustain frenzy indefinitely. It should also be (just) sustainable from a magicka and stamina point of view given the current regens of the build and the magicka return from dark conversion.
4) Do this for 100s to get to max stacks of frenzy
5) When ready to attack: After a vigor, instead of the dark conversion do: Warhorn (to proc Balorgh and buff damage)>bar swap>Crystal Weapon> Crushing Weapon> LA
(Optional 6) following the LA quickly swap back to back bar and start cycling heals again. This will be very close time wise as to whether the heals start soon enough to keep frenzy going, otherwise you have to start from 2) again. Alternatively, drop Warhorn from the offensive rotation to give more time to get back to back bar cycling heals, but this lowers the damage of the hit due to lower crit damage and not having Balorgh's buff - in this case Balorgh should be swapped for something else)

This results in a single arrow that will do 10k (LA) + 22.8k (Crystal) + 21.2k (Crushing) = 54k tooltip, before crit. If it all crits (not unlikely given ~70% crit chance), this become 116.6k.
So potentially 58.3k damage after battle spirit (before mitigation, although there is 13k pen). Could actually be higher with a bit more optimisation, plus I omitted the continuous attack buff as I thought it was unlikely that buff would be active on this type of character.
Probably not enough to take down an actual tank, but possibly enough for someone trying to blur the line of tank/damage.

Now, this requires extreme set up and is very gimmicky, and is in no way an otherwise viable build.
I'm not even sure it would ever be possible to pull off outside of being on a keep wall where you can safely build frenzy stacks and then hitting someone outside the keep.
Also, taking someone by surprise at all given this isn't a nightblade and you cast warhorn before attacking is....unlikely.
But anyway, still an interesting experiment, or at least I though so.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

I love it, its beautiful. Since you are a sorcerer for this though I wonder if overload might be better for an ult rather then the full power warhorn. I had no idea crystal weapon and crushing weapon could stack, so maybe they can also power up a overload la? Ah dang my only sorc is a really good magicka pve character or else I would totally test this. That is some scary damage.

Bergzorn · September 2020

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

I wonder if overload might be better for an ult rather then the full power warhorn.

You probably want to spend 500 ult points to get most out of Balorgh.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

Bergzorn wrote: »

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

I wonder if overload might be better for an ult rather then the full power warhorn.

You probably want to spend 500 ult points to get most out of Balorgh.

I guess it would come down to the damage given by warhorn + full strength balorgh vs. the damage given by overload la+plus some other set bonus. If nothing else, it would make the combo more readily available without farming ult.

pauld1_ESO · September 2020

Just an example of why a game like this is impossible to balance in pvp lol.

erio · September 2020

someone please make a youtube video of this looks fun lol

Jierdanit · September 2020

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

This post was inspired by the the "Elephant Gun" discussion by @xxslam48xxb14_ESO
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/545234/help-with-an-experimental-build-elephant-gun
which discussed coming up with a build capable of dealing damage large enough to take down even somewhat tanky players in one to two shots using snipe.
One difficulty established in this discussion was that often it took two hits to kill players, and landing the second snipe was quite challenging.

So, the purpose of this post was somewhat as a thought experiment to see what could be achieved in a single hit, thus removing the enemies ability to react if you take them by surprise.

Basically, this is done by exploiting simmering frenzy. I had previously looked at whether frenzy could be sustained indefinitely in the PvE context (see https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/547278/sustainable-simmering-frenzy-in-markath-theorycraft-build#latest), and then tried to see if the same could be achieved in a PvP environment. Obviously this is much more difficult, due to the -60% healing due to battlespirit. Also, where my PvE concept relied on damage through attacking (and crutching on the new Ring of the Pale Order), this wouldn't be possible if the idea was to make a single surprise attack. Instead, I looked to see if frenzy could be sustained by heals until ready to take that one shot.

The resulting build is here:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=277999

General idea:
1) Be near a keep (required for the healing bonus, otherwise healing will be insufficient) with 500 ult.
2) Activate Frenzy
3) Sit on the back bar and cycle through Healing Ward>Regen>Vigor>Dark Conversion. I think this should be (just) enough heals to sustain frenzy indefinitely. It should also be (just) sustainable from a magicka and stamina point of view given the current regens of the build and the magicka return from dark conversion.
4) Do this for 100s to get to max stacks of frenzy
5) When ready to attack: After a vigor, instead of the dark conversion do: Warhorn (to proc Balorgh and buff damage)>bar swap>Crystal Weapon> Crushing Weapon> LA
(Optional 6) following the LA quickly swap back to back bar and start cycling heals again. This will be very close time wise as to whether the heals start soon enough to keep frenzy going, otherwise you have to start from 2) again. Alternatively, drop Warhorn from the offensive rotation to give more time to get back to back bar cycling heals, but this lowers the damage of the hit due to lower crit damage and not having Balorgh's buff - in this case Balorgh should be swapped for something else)

This results in a single arrow that will do 10k (LA) + 22.8k (Crystal) + 21.2k (Crushing) = 54k tooltip, before crit. If it all crits (not unlikely given ~70% crit chance), this become 116.6k.
So potentially 58.3k damage after battle spirit (before mitigation, although there is 13k pen). Could actually be higher with a bit more optimisation, plus I omitted the continuous attack buff as I thought it was unlikely that buff would be active on this type of character.
Probably not enough to take down an actual tank, but possibly enough for someone trying to blur the line of tank/damage.

Now, this requires extreme set up and is very gimmicky, and is in no way an otherwise viable build.
I'm not even sure it would ever be possible to pull off outside of being on a keep wall where you can safely build frenzy stacks and then hitting someone outside the keep.
Also, taking someone by surprise at all given this isn't a nightblade and you cast warhorn before attacking is....unlikely.
But anyway, still an interesting experiment, or at least I though so.

Im intrigued and disgusted at the Same time lol

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

Jierdanit wrote: »

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

This post was inspired by the the "Elephant Gun" discussion by @xxslam48xxb14_ESO
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/545234/help-with-an-experimental-build-elephant-gun
which discussed coming up with a build capable of dealing damage large enough to take down even somewhat tanky players in one to two shots using snipe.
One difficulty established in this discussion was that often it took two hits to kill players, and landing the second snipe was quite challenging.

So, the purpose of this post was somewhat as a thought experiment to see what could be achieved in a single hit, thus removing the enemies ability to react if you take them by surprise.

Basically, this is done by exploiting simmering frenzy. I had previously looked at whether frenzy could be sustained indefinitely in the PvE context (see https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/547278/sustainable-simmering-frenzy-in-markath-theorycraft-build#latest), and then tried to see if the same could be achieved in a PvP environment. Obviously this is much more difficult, due to the -60% healing due to battlespirit. Also, where my PvE concept relied on damage through attacking (and crutching on the new Ring of the Pale Order), this wouldn't be possible if the idea was to make a single surprise attack. Instead, I looked to see if frenzy could be sustained by heals until ready to take that one shot.

The resulting build is here:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=277999

General idea:
1) Be near a keep (required for the healing bonus, otherwise healing will be insufficient) with 500 ult.
2) Activate Frenzy
3) Sit on the back bar and cycle through Healing Ward>Regen>Vigor>Dark Conversion. I think this should be (just) enough heals to sustain frenzy indefinitely. It should also be (just) sustainable from a magicka and stamina point of view given the current regens of the build and the magicka return from dark conversion.
4) Do this for 100s to get to max stacks of frenzy
5) When ready to attack: After a vigor, instead of the dark conversion do: Warhorn (to proc Balorgh and buff damage)>bar swap>Crystal Weapon> Crushing Weapon> LA
(Optional 6) following the LA quickly swap back to back bar and start cycling heals again. This will be very close time wise as to whether the heals start soon enough to keep frenzy going, otherwise you have to start from 2) again. Alternatively, drop Warhorn from the offensive rotation to give more time to get back to back bar cycling heals, but this lowers the damage of the hit due to lower crit damage and not having Balorgh's buff - in this case Balorgh should be swapped for something else)

This results in a single arrow that will do 10k (LA) + 22.8k (Crystal) + 21.2k (Crushing) = 54k tooltip, before crit. If it all crits (not unlikely given ~70% crit chance), this become 116.6k.
So potentially 58.3k damage after battle spirit (before mitigation, although there is 13k pen). Could actually be higher with a bit more optimisation, plus I omitted the continuous attack buff as I thought it was unlikely that buff would be active on this type of character.
Probably not enough to take down an actual tank, but possibly enough for someone trying to blur the line of tank/damage.

Now, this requires extreme set up and is very gimmicky, and is in no way an otherwise viable build.
I'm not even sure it would ever be possible to pull off outside of being on a keep wall where you can safely build frenzy stacks and then hitting someone outside the keep.
Also, taking someone by surprise at all given this isn't a nightblade and you cast warhorn before attacking is....unlikely.
But anyway, still an interesting experiment, or at least I though so.

Im intrigued and disgusted at the Same time lol

It is pretty powerful, but consider the fact that bombers can kill an entire group with less setup. Bombers deal more damage and get more kills for less work on an easier setup. Not trying to hate on bombers, its just always struck me as odd that doing big single target damage is OP, but killing an entire army in a flash is ok. Not saying you think this way, but man lots of people cry nerf over strong single target damage.

This ever gets used on someone that isn't used to being 1 shotted they will get mad salty though. @ExistingRug61 needs to deliver and show us a video of him using this build in combat or at least test it out and tell us how it goes. I want to hear about or see someone getting nailed for probably well over 30k damage in a single hit.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

Oops. ignore this.

ExistingRug61 · September 2020

Ok, so I put in a bit of effort to actual try this out.
I actually play on xbox normally and don't have the spare mats to do something silly like gold out vampire lord jewellery, so instead I downloaded the PTS onto my old laptop to test it with a template. This added some challenges as my laptops poor performance, coupled with my Aus ping (bouncing between 300-500), meant I had some issues trying to keep the heal rotation consistent long enough.

Anyway, first some thing I noticed was the actual cost of frenzy isn't quite right in the builder. In game it was 731 h/s at base (builder indicated 675 h/s). So a bit more healing is required. Also the cost of skills in general was a bit higher than on builder, but this wasn't an issue for sustaining the heals.

A problem I faced on the PTS is that I didn't have another player to test on, and also there was no Cyrodiil campaign with CP available (but there was a CP Imp City).
So I did testing in Imp City as the build needs the CP bonuses to healing, shield size and and crit, but this meant I did not have the +20% healing from being near a keep. This combined with the increased cost of frenzy meant I wasn't sure if I would be able to sustain frenzy with heals. This was somewhat true. I first just tried to see how long I could keep frenzy for, and averaged between 80sec-120sec, with variance due to me either screwing up or getting lag and missing a heal, or perhaps having a poor run of crits. I think the heal bonus in Cyrodiil when near a keep would help this, and possibly a bit more health would give a bit of a safety net (although reduce max damage slightly).

Then I tried actually getting an attack off on a twilight. I ended up doing deciding to do this at somewhere around the 75sec mark, as I got tired of simply losing frenzy and having to start again. I also was lazy and impatient and couldn't be bothered building up full ult for balorgh, so this was only at about 280 ult.

Here is a screenshot where I got full crits:

So around 90k, but obviously this doesn't have the battle spirit damage reduction applied. Not the amount theoretically possible listed in the OP, but the 41k crystal hit is consistent with what builder indicates it should be capable of at ~75 stacks. So its just a question of is it possible to get to higher stacks more consistently once the extra healing buff in Cyrodiil is present to get to the higher values. And then whether these raw values are actually enough to get through the average players mitigation and crit resist after battle spirit.

One thing I don't quite understand is one of the values shown. I assume the 7k is my enchant, the 41k is crystal, and the 16k is the LA. But I would have expected crushing, which by a process of elimination must be the 25k, to be closer to the crystal value, as according to tooltips crushing should be approx 90% the value of crystal, so should be more like 36k? Not sure what's up there.
All I can think of is that maybe I lost frenzy at around the time I cast crushing, but then it would have been even less, plus the LA should also be less in that case as thats after crushing? Is there any other factor that could be affecting damage, maybe something specific to PvE monsters?

From this it seems to me that this whole idea should be possible to pull off, but there is almost no margin for error for the whole setup time, plus you have to be lucky and have someone you want to attack be present at the time you manage to get to full stacks of frenzy. Its just such a ridiculous amount of setup compared to anything else.

Even if I had all the gear to use on live, I don't like my chances of actually managing to hit a player with this.

Bergzorn · September 2020

That are some impressive numbers. Especially the one in the lower left corner of the screen.

I was like "wtf" until I remembered you did this on the PTS...

Factoring in Battle Spirit and crit resistance, I'd say you would one-shot all but the tankiest builds. Which is a shame, because IMO the effort is only worth it if you can reliably take out the "really big" guys.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

Bergzorn wrote: »

That are some impressive numbers. Especially the one in the lower left corner of the screen.
I was like "wtf" until I remembered you did this on the PTS...

Factoring in Battle Spirit and crit resistance, I'd say you would one-shot all but the tankiest builds. Which is a shame, because IMO the effort is only worth it if you can reliably take out the "really big" guys.

I think he could take out the 30k hp stamdens and stamcros(the elephants as I like to call them) with that setup. We would all love to be able to slap down the 60k hp monster tanks, but that just ain't going to happen. I could only imagine the salt if he nailed a 1vxer with that burst and ended their spree in one attack. They already get so salty when I simply snipe them. I am super envious of sorcerer right now.

BangX · September 2020

Lol, in pve, I'm hitting 130k on a parse from stealth and next patch with the empower buff, I'll be hitting even harder. You don't need to go this far to 1 shot in pvp, it's doable in 2 seconds with the right setup.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

BangX wrote: »

Lol, in pve, I'm hitting 130k on a parse from stealth and next patch with the empower buff, I'll be hitting even harder. You don't need to go this far to 1 shot in pvp, it's doable in 2 seconds with the right setup.

Tell me your secret and is it doable on a nb?

Waffennacht · September 2020

If I were to cast defensive posture, could you potentially 1 shot yourself?

BangX · September 2020

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

BangX wrote: »

Lol, in pve, I'm hitting 130k on a parse from stealth and next patch with the empower buff, I'll be hitting even harder. You don't need to go this far to 1 shot in pvp, it's doable in 2 seconds with the right setup.

Tell me your secret and is it doable on a nb?

5x undaunted infiltrator and 5x nma with 2x molag kena. 2 bt 1 infused.

Not gonna tell you how it works because Zeni reads the forums and i don't want it to get nerfed, but I can give you a hint, it's a bow heavy attack build. You can watch sribes old videos on YouTube to understand how it works.

Bergzorn · September 2020

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

I think he could take out the 30k hp stamdens and stamcros(the elephants as I like to call them) with that setup. We would all love to be able to slap down the 60k hp monster tanks, but that just ain't going to happen.

It's not only about 60k HP tanks.

Let's say the tooltip damage is 90k, so 45k after Battle Spirit. Let's further assume that the attacker's crit multiplier is 1.5 and the target has critical resistance such that the effective crit multiplier is 1.25, and that the target has left 20% of total damage reduction (armor, buffs) after penetration. This would bring down the damage done to exactly 30k.

Although it would be very satisfying to kill an 30.001 HP tank with a light attack after they survived the first onslaught.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

BangX wrote: »

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

BangX wrote: »

Lol, in pve, I'm hitting 130k on a parse from stealth and next patch with the empower buff, I'll be hitting even harder. You don't need to go this far to 1 shot in pvp, it's doable in 2 seconds with the right setup.

Tell me your secret and is it doable on a nb?

5x undaunted infiltrator and 5x nma with 2x molag kena. 2 bt 1 infused.

Not gonna tell you how it works because Zeni reads the forums and i don't want it to get nerfed, but I can give you a hint, it's a bow heavy attack build. You can watch sribes old videos on YouTube to understand how it works.

Sribes is mad old school, does that really still work after all this time? Why even nma then? Why not just go sergeant mail and go full on heavy attack build? I am mad skeptical because you would think something that busted would be all over cyrodiil. I mean its kinda hard to hide getting 1 shotted with a heavy attack and not accidentally let it slip. I will still try it out for a bit, probably without nma or molag kena though, I think we have evolved to better setups. Who knows though maybe its actually critical to the build.

BangX · September 2020

Because sergeant doesn't buff surprise attack damage or enchant damage. Also no one uses it because most gankblades are noobs but with empower next patch, I'm sure it'll become popular again. Also molag kena is needed, 600 weapon from stealth is pretty big.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

BangX wrote: »

Because sergeant doesn't buff surprise attack damage or enchant damage. Also no one uses it because most gankblades are noobs but with empower next patch, I'm sure it'll become popular again. Also molag kena is needed, 600 weapon from stealth is pretty big.

How does one proc molag kena from stealth? I would think dealing damage with light attacks would break stealth. You would certainly lose the element of surprise even if you cloak after procing it. Is mage light still used to proc might of the guild? I know that knocks you out of stealth now. Ill try to figure this out on the ptr, at the very least it will be something different to try out from the usual snipe combo.

ne.ga.kurai_ESO · September 2020

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

How does one proc molag kena from stealth? I would think dealing damage with light attacks would break stealth. You would certainly lose the element of surprise even if you cloak after procing it. Is mage light still used to proc might of the guild? I know that knocks you out of stealth now. Ill try to figure this out on the ptr, at the very least it will be something different to try out from the usual snipe combo.

Molag has been broken for a while. You can whiff w/ no target to proc it.

Waffennacht · September 2020

ne.ga.kurai_ESO wrote: »

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

How does one proc molag kena from stealth? I would think dealing damage with light attacks would break stealth. You would certainly lose the element of surprise even if you cloak after procing it. Is mage light still used to proc might of the guild? I know that knocks you out of stealth now. Ill try to figure this out on the ptr, at the very least it will be something different to try out from the usual snipe combo.

Molag has been broken for a while. You can whiff w/ no target to proc it.

Thought that was done on purpose?

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · September 2020

ne.ga.kurai_ESO wrote: »

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

How does one proc molag kena from stealth? I would think dealing damage with light attacks would break stealth. You would certainly lose the element of surprise even if you cloak after procing it. Is mage light still used to proc might of the guild? I know that knocks you out of stealth now. Ill try to figure this out on the ptr, at the very least it will be something different to try out from the usual snipe combo.

Molag has been broken for a while. You can whiff w/ no target to proc it.

Well that does sound pretty broken, tool tip clearly says to deal damage with 2 consecutive light attacks. Still though, not having ring of the wild hunt and using surprise attack instead of concealed weapon would make you a slow poke that would be very easy to kill. If I can figure out this secret build, I would probably run it with Ring of the wild hunt and use maybe silver shards instead of surprise attack.

I think I am more excited for the new arena set that gives snipe 33% more damage at close range. I already like to get up close and personnel so I can use acid spray to roll catch anyone I don't instantly kill. Would be a nice tool to swap in when I don't need range and you could even follow it up with an incap. Probably won't make it to live with 33% extra damage though(I can already hear the squealing masses).