Addressing U50 PTS Combat & Ability Concerns

rlindsey912nub18_ESO · May 9

So Nightblades are still stuck being trash and won’t be able to compete with pure classes or subclasses is what I am hearing and stop trying to buff nbs thru pure damage stacks Jesus Christ it’s an rogue class with no bleeding or poison damage could have used this opportunity to give nbs some of those thru the passives not that trash crit damage passive

xylena · May 9

hoangdz wrote: »

2) Diminishing returns could help solve the power-creep issue, but it would also drive away the veteran community. I mean, would you even want to take the game seriously if you spent 4 hours a day perfecting your rotation and farming gear, only to barely do 30k more DPS than some average guy who logs in for an hour a day or once every few days?

Yes this is how it should be. The sweatlord still beats the casual 100% of the time. The player who sweats extra just to do 31k more instead of 30k more is still the top player. I don't need a stat sheet making me do logarithmically more damage than casuals on top of my skill advantage.

This was how the game was at launch with the Soft Cap system that they got rid of in the name of the "infinite progression" they were marketing the cp system as. So after a decade+ of "infinite progression" we can see pretty well what that's done to the game.

Tannus15 · 12:55AM

Just throwing my support behind the excellent posts by @Turtle_Bot @MashmalloMan @ZhuJiuyin @Cammiepoo @pluvioisaplanet

Please, trust us. We know that on the dummy sorc looks amazing, but there are huge limitations when it comes to group content which are not being represented on the dummy.

The dummy is not the game.

Cleave matters.
Support in the form of buffs and debuffs matter.
Sorc does almost nothing on all these fronts.

To make sorc work right now we're running essentially 3 spammables. Knife, bound armaments and frags. It's all single target. Stack static reverb on top of that and it becaomes very clear that you're not going to get any cleave out of this build.
You're just not, all the GCD's are tied to those skills.

Static reverb is carrying sorc hard in these parses. Take it off and you lose 17k+ for the passive damage plus whatever concussed it's procing.

I also want to put some emphasis on any build that is running 60% crit chance is going to have big swings on the dummy. Look a those big 200k parses and you'll see 80% crit on frags. Because why would someone post their parse with bad frag crit %?
In real content we don't reset the boss because we're not getting frag procs and can see that the NUMBA TOO SMOL.

You're balancing on a curated data set where it only shows the best case scenario.

Please, I'm begging you, stop using dummy parses as the most important metric for PvE balance. It's a really good metric is identifying where something is too weak, but it's a terrible metric for identifying when something is too strong.

coop500 · 1:13AM

Tannus15 wrote: »

Just throwing my support behind the excellent posts by @Turtle_Bot @MashmalloMan @ZhuJiuyin @Cammiepoo @pluvioisaplanet

Please, trust us. We know that on the dummy sorc looks amazing, but there are huge limitations when it comes to group content which are not being represented on the dummy.

The dummy is not the game.

Cleave matters.
Support in the form of buffs and debuffs matter.
Sorc does almost nothing on all these fronts.

To make sorc work right now we're running essentially 3 spammables. Knife, bound armaments and frags. It's all single target. Stack static reverb on top of that and it becaomes very clear that you're not going to get any cleave out of this build.
You're just not, all the GCD's are tied to those skills.

Static reverb is carrying sorc hard in these parses. Take it off and you lose 17k+ for the passive damage plus whatever concussed it's procing.

I also want to put some emphasis on any build that is running 60% crit chance is going to have big swings on the dummy. Look a those big 200k parses and you'll see 80% crit on frags. Because why would someone post their parse with bad frag crit %?
In real content we don't reset the boss because we're not getting frag procs and can see that the NUMBA TOO SMOL.

You're balancing on a curated data set where it only shows the best case scenario.

Please, I'm begging you, stop using dummy parses as the most important metric for PvE balance. It's a really good metric is identifying where something is too weak, but it's a terrible metric for identifying when something is too strong.

This entire post can also include WW in most PvE cases too, and NB and Necromancer and Templar. It's rough out there for these playstyles/classes, especially when not abusing the meta.

Draggimus · 3:09AM

how does it make any sense to acknowledge that nightblade class masteries are bad but then point out that they have subclassing builds that are overperforming as some sort of counterargument
they're mutually exclusive

can u explain, cause i don't think u actually understand

ZhuJiuyin · 3:15AM

Draggimus wrote: »

how does it make any sense to acknowledge that nightblade class masteries are bad but then point out that they have subclassing builds that are overperforming as some sort of counterargument
they're mutually exclusive

can u explain, cause i don't think u actually understand

Where's the contradiction? Because Nightblades lack AoE, class mastery doesn't truly help them. And class mastery doesn't offer a more effective means of survival in PvP (aside from stealth).

However, in subclass builds, Assassination provides a huge amount of critical chance and critical damage, and no other class skills can provide so much critical chance and critical damage simultaneously. This forces many subclass builds need to revolve around Assassination; otherwise, they're limiting themselves.

ArctosCethlenn · 3:20AM

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Draggimus wrote: »

how does it make any sense to acknowledge that nightblade class masteries are bad but then point out that they have subclassing builds that are overperforming as some sort of counterargument
they're mutually exclusive

can u explain, cause i don't think u actually understand

Where's the contradiction? Because Nightblades lack AoE, class mastery doesn't truly help them. And class mastery doesn't offer a more effective means of survival in PvP (aside from stealth).

However, in subclass builds, Assassination provides a huge amount of critical chance and critical damage, and no other class skills can provide so much critical chance and critical damage simultaneously. This forces many subclass builds need to revolve around Assassination; otherwise, they're limiting themselves.

no ***? that's the problem?

Draggimus · 3:23AM

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Because Nightblades lack AoE, class mastery doesn't truly help them. And class mastery doesn't offer a more effective means of survival in PvP (aside from stealth).

that is literally the point of the class masteries?
to do so, to make it worth keeping all 3 lines, to bridge the gap between the mistake that is subclassing and pure classes

they're also literally mutually exclusive with subclassing, so a subclassing build being overpowered has ZERO relevance to them being bad?

"assassination is too good in subclassing!" that's sure an issue because you can definitely get these passives while subclassing
what are you even talking about u clown

ZhuJiuyin · 4:28AM

Draggimus wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Because Nightblades lack AoE, class mastery doesn't truly help them. And class mastery doesn't offer a more effective means of survival in PvP (aside from stealth).

that is literally the point of the class masteries?
to do so, to make it worth keeping all 3 lines, to bridge the gap between the mistake that is subclassing and pure classes

they're also literally mutually exclusive with subclassing, so a subclassing build being overpowered has ZERO relevance to them being bad?

"assassination is too good in subclassing!" that's sure an issue because you can definitely get these passives while subclassing
what are you even talking about u clown

Let's be rational, okay?

It was for some unknown reason that the development team decided to concentrate all of Nightblade's damage potential on the Assassination line and over-buff that line, resulting in Assassination being excessively powerful in sub-builds and possessing the highest crit cap in the game. Many acknowledge that most Nightblade masteries don't significantly benefit the build, but many also point out that with a pure Nightblade possessing the highest crit cap in the game, it's difficult to truly balance PvE and PvP, because once the crit reaches a certain level, the advantage is amplified exponentially. This problem is essentially unsolvable before the class refresh, which is exactly what the developers said: "This isn't something we can comprehensively solve until we do the refresh work for the Nightblade class. What we were able to adjust on the PTS helps, but it is intended to be a stopgap until the class refresh."

For a simple example, if An Eye for Exploitation is increased to 1665 (the same as Warden Mastery), then due to the excessively high crit rate of Assassination, the benefit from this 1665 Weapon Damage will be greater than that from Warden, because Warden's passive ability does not have an additional crit chance.

ArctosCethlenn · 5:15AM

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Draggimus wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

Because Nightblades lack AoE, class mastery doesn't truly help them. And class mastery doesn't offer a more effective means of survival in PvP (aside from stealth).

that is literally the point of the class masteries?
to do so, to make it worth keeping all 3 lines, to bridge the gap between the mistake that is subclassing and pure classes

they're also literally mutually exclusive with subclassing, so a subclassing build being overpowered has ZERO relevance to them being bad?

"assassination is too good in subclassing!" that's sure an issue because you can definitely get these passives while subclassing
what are you even talking about u clown

Let's be rational, okay?

It was for some unknown reason that the development team decided to concentrate all of Nightblade's damage potential on the Assassination line and over-buff that line, resulting in Assassination being excessively powerful in sub-builds and possessing the highest crit cap in the game. Many acknowledge that most Nightblade masteries don't significantly benefit the build, but many also point out that with a pure Nightblade possessing the highest crit cap in the game, it's difficult to truly balance PvE and PvP, because once the crit reaches a certain level, the advantage is amplified exponentially. This problem is essentially unsolvable before the class refresh, which is exactly what the developers said: "This isn't something we can comprehensively solve until we do the refresh work for the Nightblade class. What we were able to adjust on the PTS helps, but it is intended to be a stopgap until the class refresh."

For a simple example, if An Eye for Exploitation is increased to 1665 (the same as Warden Mastery), then due to the excessively high crit rate of Assassination, the benefit from this 1665 Weapon Damage will be greater than that from Warden, because Warden's passive ability does not have an additional crit chance.

Except that's not true for your example of e4e vs warden mastery.

Eye for exploitation scales based off the targets missing health while warden mastery is simply based on status effects which will always be active. So even if the peak values are identical, the warden has that 1665 s/wd all the time for offense based on their status effects on the nb, and for defense from the nb's status effects on the warden. The nightblade gets nothing for offense unless they're already able to pressure through the warden's self healing without eye for exploitation, and their own healing boost from e4e only kicks in as they're losing the fight, but still won't be as potent as the warden's until the nb is in execute range or dead on the ground.