Player v NPC Crit In Combat Situations

KyleTheYounger · June 2021

My main toon is a PvE battlemage build Mag DK Nord (master craftsman skill maxed) who's currently at CP 489. He's a master thief/DB assassin so all of his stealth skills are maxed. His main weapon bar is flame destruction staff and back bar is two handed axe/sword (for melee situations). I've also set him up as the main crafting/scavenging toon for all my alts. But also want to make him as combat effecitive as possible for PvE. So I can solo vet dungeons and beat endgame MQ bosses like Molag Bal, be better at defensive surviveability in Cyrodil/Imperial City doing
the PvE questlines. And especially rugged enough to solo the new chapter boss content in Blackwood. My toon currently got legendary on both armor/jewellry sets and weapons. But since he's a not a mag sorc or pure magikca wielding build, he's typically disadvantaged fighting pure magikca based NPCs (especially bosses).

So I've been trying to customize his magicka constellation. This way I can optimize his survivabilty for end game PvE content. Given the cost of redistributing the skill points in the mage constellation, I didn't want to waste any gold on obviously bad constellation choices. Especially since under the new update, where the majority of these top skills aren't passive/must be active in the bar to get any combat bonus from them. So you really have to be discriminating which skills you're adding those hard earned CP skills to.

Need to optimize what remaining offensive skills are left to acquire for combat in mage constellation. Trying to decide if it's advantageous to invest points in:

reaving blows/occult overload/backstabber (seems more defensive fighting mechanics) v. deadly aim/biting aura/thurmaturge (seems more offensive fight mechanics)

http://ibb.co/zXJp0RY

Read somewhere that NPCs don't generate crit in combat. Is this only regular hostile NPCs, or does it apply to higher NPCs like Bosses, NPCs in trials, and quest/MQ Bosses like Molag Bal?

If all NPCs don't generate crit in combat, do the game mechanics work the same as it does in PvP? i.e. your toon will always be OP when fighting NPC bosses by default of their ability to generate crit. Since it's always a player v. NPC combat scenario where the combat is asymetrically skewed in favor of the player since their toon can generate crit?

Don't know if I'm making sense. There is an overwhelming amount of guides and info on how to optimize PvE builds for the current update. Given the grind of acquiring skill points and higher cost to redistribute them, I don't want to waste time/effort selecting the wrong constellation skills. Just want to design a defensive but combat effective PvE magDK who can solo the DLC content and bosses. And be survivable enough on the defensive end to complete the PvE content in PvP areas like Cyrodil and IC.

oterWitz · June 2021

If your question is whether or not NPCs can crit against you, the answer is no, even in places like Cyro and IC.

I think you're asking more than that, though, but am not sure what exactly you're looking for. In terms of general advice, you are running a hybrid build, so most guides out there will not be helpful for your situation, and perhaps misleading if the intended use of their build is different than yours. At the end of your post you also say that you want to be able to solo all quest content (right? am I reading that correctly?), for which my advice would be to balance your skills between damage, enemy debuff, self heal/shield, and self buff. That's more or less the core of any solo play, and while it might be possible to get away without some of them, having at least one of each type of skill will help you a lot. For quest-related content, champion points aren't really necessary, as ZoS designs them to be playable for people of all levels including new players without cp.

KyleTheYounger · June 2021

Thanks for the quick follow up! What I was really asking was:

Since only players can generate crit, then does this offensive/defensive game mechanic work to the player's advantage in PvE like it was designed to do in PvP?

In other words if:

1. I spend all my skill points in say the Mage constellation (since I have a Magicka based vs Stamina based DK build) and

2. invest them in maxing deadly aim/biting aura/thurmaturge skills instead of putting them in pure noncombat skill like better chances at fishing/improving food/potions/treasure hunting etc. then

3. would it be far easier to kill mega bosses like Molag Bal, Dagaon & all the top end dungeon/overland PvE bosses that were designed to be solo'd by the player?

In other words, does wasting your points in the constellations to max your PvP combat skills make it easier to beat the game MQ and DLC as a PvE player?

oterWitz · June 2021

I'm not much of a PvPer, but the cp stars you listed (deadly aim/biting aura/thaumaturge) work in both PvP and PvE, they are just good offensive stars generally. I think of PvP stars as ones that boost critical resistance (as only players can crit against you) and that buff you when under CC immunity (as you spend much more time in that condition in PvP vs PvE, even in solo content). So if it answers your question, investing cp in offensive stars is generally worthwhile and they do help you in both PvP and PvE. But as I said before, playing solo is a balancing act of both offense and defense, so taking those offensive stars is good in addition to ones that increase your health and armor (and those defensive stars are beneficial in PvP and PvE). Does that make sense/help?

Also, I could be reading it wrong, but remember that cp is earned evenly between the green, blue, and red trees. So there is no point not allocating all of your cp across all three constellations, it's just a matter of choosing which stars you want out of each constellation.

KyleTheYounger · June 2021

Yes it does and thank you! It's going to be an interesting balancing act