madmufffin wrote: »

Abstraqt wrote: »

It's bizarre this swallow soul update has been so complicated, especially when there are many other abilities on night blade which would benefit from an update to help bring NB in line with other classes, it's a shame we're nearly all the way through the PTS and it's been 4 weeks spent complicating a spammable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy Zos acknowledge nightblades need some help, but it just seems like so much time has been wasted on one skill, and it's nowhere near enough to get the class out of the grave!

They could've just flat increased the swallow soul tooltip by 20% and invested more time into an actual issue. Dumping this much effort into some convoluted conditional buff just doesn't make sense.

Completely agree, they've doubled down on "improving" a skill which could have had a simple buff, instead of looking at other aspects of the class. What a shame

I'm happy to see swallow soul buffed and looking forward to try ranged magblade again in cyro. Last time I played that though the problem was that swallow soul is awful to weave. It's clunky, slow, often cancels the LA, and the char animation is so awkward. It's fine as a buff skill but as a spammable is really awkward regardless of its damage

Prionyx wrote: »

As Major_Toughness mentioned:

Swallow Soul has been nerfed, in theory only marginally, but is the opposite of what they were intending.

They nerfed the base tooltip damage, but the new additional damage is applied far later in the damage calculation on top of your existing damage bonuses.

In practise on PTS this felt significantly less damage in duels, so maybe theres also something strange going on with battle spirit, I don't know.

Lets say your base tooltip is 10,000, and you are running Soulcleaver as it was the only way to get any meaningful damage from Swallow Soul.
You have Minor Beserk too from Monomyth.
So your damage done multipliers are 100+15+12+5 = 132% damage (15 and 12 from soulcleaver)
10,000 * 1.32 = 13,200

Since we now have 17% less base damage, but an additional 25% damage (in previous post it was said it was capped at 50% health for new bonus, patch notes do not mention this though)
Base is now 8300, and our bonuses are 157%
8300 * 1.57 = 13,031

The more damage buffs you have, the worse this change is, but on a "standard" Swallow Soul PvP build, this change is actually a nerf, by 1%.

Except they didn't cap the damage bonus like that. The change + uncapped bonus means that without soulcleaver, swallow soul is close to but doesn't pass concealed, which is as it should be and one of their stated targets for the adjustment. IDK how you're talking about things "in practice" on the pts when they literally don't exist in that form and never did.

With Soulcleaver, on PTS swallow soul now passes concealed, where on live it hasn't since the last soulcleaver rework made part of the set's bonuses +12% to all damage. This seems intentional since now the siphoning set is back to making the siphoning spammable your best spammable.

If they add the currently nonexistent cap for whatever reason, yeah sure you have an argument, but since that would make the rework a nerf and worse than the live version despite their stated goal to buff it... maybe we should stop talking about a cap before the monkey's paw notices.

gammelscroll wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

What was the point of making such a cool change with 10% damage just to scrap it NEXT week leaving it just as useless as it was before?

I dont understand this. NA players must play a whole different game than us EU players. I see alot of magIcka NB doing crazy dmg with swallow soul hitting for 8k, power extraction Around 10k, and merciless resolve hit for 15k.
I have 4500 crit resist and 35k phys/spell resist and I could hardly survive vs that NB.

So, in this forum everyone saying NB.is.so.bad. I cant comprehend that.

Swallow soul hitting for 8k and power extraction hitting for 10k ?
I'm going to call your bluff.

only way that happens especially with your resistances is if you are fighting an emp or a member of a comped grouped that has tons of buffs on him.

gammelscroll wrote: »

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

gammelscroll wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

What was the point of making such a cool change with 10% damage just to scrap it NEXT week leaving it just as useless as it was before?

I dont understand this. NA players must play a whole different game than us EU players. I see alot of magIcka NB doing crazy dmg with swallow soul hitting for 8k, power extraction Around 10k, and merciless resolve hit for 15k.
I have 4500 crit resist and 35k phys/spell resist and I could hardly survive vs that NB.

So, in this forum everyone saying NB.is.so.bad. I cant comprehend that.

Swallow soul hitting for 8k and power extraction hitting for 10k ?
I'm going to call your bluff.

only way that happens especially with your resistances is if you are fighting an emp or a member of a comped grouped that has tons of buffs on him.

Its not bluff. He spammed BGs last night, and had average 25 + kills. Would love to know what gear he was running. That NB was so good. This is from one fight with him. You wanna see more? NB in BGs is really good if you can play. But everything works in BG tho

Exaggerated much? You’re reading the data wrong. It says the average hit of merciless was 11.3k, swallow soul 5.4k, and power extraction 3.7k

Even the maximum hits fully buffed and critted are well under what you stated. Also there was a tether Ult in there, meaning he probably got a buff from balorgh for the 14k merciless. The only way he hit those numbers on those resists is with a 500 balorgh ult. To make matters worse, assuming you didn’t exaggerate on your resistances, you cherry picked an encounter where a nightblade used a 500 ult balorgh to post numbers on here claiming nightblades are doing too much damage, when we all know nightblades are one of the weakest class in PvP right now

Strife fixes absolutely nothing with nbs but don’t worry nbs just wait a few years and you’ll get some buffs

Vaqual wrote: »

I understand that this doesn't solve a ton of problems, but it also didn't really create new ones. That is already nice. A tangible buff with reasonable counterplay options is exactly what they should do. If they stick to the script for the rest of the kit they can actually manage to make this good.

A buff to a singular ability should never carry a class kit. This isn't the change I would have personally picked for Strife, but it is qualitatively much better than some of the changes we have seen in the last 16 Patches.

I think the cynicism is a bit misplaced here.

It's more just a general "why bother" kind of thing. Both Strife on Nightblade and Balanced Warrior on Templar technically received buffs, but both have been tied to needlessly complex mechanisms that likely took a lot of dev and qa time and provide a very miniscule actual benefit to the class' kit. It also does literally nothing to fix the pretty blatant problems the classes suffer from in PVP especially. They could've had an intern boost the tool tip value of strife by 20% and give Balanced Warrior 12% benefit and just moved on. Instead there's some wildly convoluted conditions that'll likely negatively impact performance and be subject of constant 'balance' iterations for patches to come.

gammelscroll wrote: »

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

gammelscroll wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

What was the point of making such a cool change with 10% damage just to scrap it NEXT week leaving it just as useless as it was before?

I dont understand this. NA players must play a whole different game than us EU players. I see alot of magIcka NB doing crazy dmg with swallow soul hitting for 8k, power extraction Around 10k, and merciless resolve hit for 15k.
I have 4500 crit resist and 35k phys/spell resist and I could hardly survive vs that NB.

So, in this forum everyone saying NB.is.so.bad. I cant comprehend that.

Swallow soul hitting for 8k and power extraction hitting for 10k ?
I'm going to call your bluff.

only way that happens especially with your resistances is if you are fighting an emp or a member of a comped grouped that has tons of buffs on him.

Its not bluff. He spammed BGs last night, and had average 25 + kills. Would love to know what gear he was running. That NB was so good. This is from one fight with him. You wanna see more? NB in BGs is really good if you can play. But everything works in BG tho

Ty for the laugh, hey at least the maximum crit they can do next patch will be how much you thought they can do this patch which is nice.
And honestly speaking thats still more than i can do on my nb, i dont think ive done more than 6k vs a non pve build with an ss. Tho 14k bow procs are pretty common

Gupitoos wrote: »

Swallow is soul is broken now doing 15-20k bursts with sets like soulclever and oakfathers, how does that make sense? It hits harder than ultis.
Are we going to be moving from one broken thing to the next every update now?


@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

I don't think you have understood the scope of this change.

gammelscroll wrote: »

DarkDismal wrote: »

gammelscroll wrote: »

Alchimiste1 wrote: »

gammelscroll wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

What was the point of making such a cool change with 10% damage just to scrap it NEXT week leaving it just as useless as it was before?

I dont understand this. NA players must play a whole different game than us EU players. I see alot of magIcka NB doing crazy dmg with swallow soul hitting for 8k, power extraction Around 10k, and merciless resolve hit for 15k.
I have 4500 crit resist and 35k phys/spell resist and I could hardly survive vs that NB.

So, in this forum everyone saying NB.is.so.bad. I cant comprehend that.

Swallow soul hitting for 8k and power extraction hitting for 10k ?
I'm going to call your bluff.

only way that happens especially with your resistances is if you are fighting an emp or a member of a comped grouped that has tons of buffs on him.

Its not bluff. He spammed BGs last night, and had average 25 + kills. Would love to know what gear he was running. That NB was so good. This is from one fight with him. You wanna see more? NB in BGs is really good if you can play. But everything works in BG tho

Exaggerated much? You’re reading the data wrong. It says the average hit of merciless was 11.3k, swallow soul 5.4k, and power extraction 3.7k

Even the maximum hits fully buffed and critted are well under what you stated. Also there was a tether Ult in there, meaning he probably got a buff from balorgh for the 14k merciless. The only way he hit those numbers on those resists is with a 500 balorgh ult. To make matters worse, assuming you didn’t exaggerate on your resistances, you cherry picked an encounter where a nightblade used a 500 ult balorgh to post numbers on here claiming nightblades are doing too much damage, when we all know nightblades are one of the weakest class in PvP right now

I got alot more proof of this guy hitting like a truck. This is just 3.picture out of alot.
His merciless hit for around 12-15k every time. Swollow soul sits around 8k at average. You wanna see rest of the proof?
The ones who say NB is bad in BGs clearly dont know how to build.
NB in cyrodil is pretty much useless.
But again, everything works in BG

ZOS really should think about the extreme cases when buffing skills, but they won't and aren't which means that this buff will have the potential to be busted on live for sure, Sure it will be in specific conditions on builds built in specific ways, but at what point do we consider something unbalanced? At what point is it an issue besides where obvious?

If ZOS used a clear rubric it'd be easier to understand their position making changes. But that they don't means that opinions will vary and things that maybe shouldn't get defended will be pushed to release.

Perhaps the stealth changes are that profound in combat that this buff to the skill (and crit) won't matter realistically and there's the argument that both roll and block (and invis pot, if you know how) exist anyway. Which are all valid, but look at the situation in an isolated fashion.

It is a skill that provides offense and defense at the same time as well, which puts it in a special category in the system; and it's ranged. With all the potential interactions that go with that, should this skill really be getting buffed and to what extent?

ZOS has decided it has. Well, it will be soon time for a show on Live...

Gupitoos wrote: »

Swallow is soul is broken now doing 15-20k bursts with sets like soulclever and oakfathers, how does that make sense? It hits harder than ultis.
Are we going to be moving from one broken thing to the next every update now?


@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

What color is the sky in the world you live in?

Gupitoos wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

Gupitoos wrote: »

Swallow is soul is broken now doing 15-20k bursts with sets like soulclever and oakfathers, how does that make sense? It hits harder than ultis.
Are we going to be moving from one broken thing to the next every update now?


@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

What color is the sky in the world you live in?

Is that why YouTube is full of clips showcasing the dumb damage swallow soul is capable of now on pts?
Granted it’s for certain builds but it’s way too busted. It’s tooltip is doing more damage than any other spammable currently on pts, including DK’s whip and this is before you take into account the added 1% damage bonus for every 2% hp you have.

You’re a Nightblade main though so ofc you will be happy with this

Doesn't the tooltip take the bonus damage into account already? It seems to, based on this comment

Ecgberht_confused wrote: »

It will hit slightly above concealed, at the expense of (1) a dedicated 5 piece set and (2) a skill line that you'd normally subclass away. I think NBs can have this one!

The numbers you're writing above are not possible unless they're against players with pve gear, or no gear at all tbh

All you have to do is go on YouTube and watch the dozens of videos out already by various different streamers showcasing the absurd damage swallow soul does on PTS currently. They’re wearing stuff like soulcleaver and oakfathers. Isn’t it hypocritical to cry about DK whips and WW damage but when your class gets buffed to overpeform it’s fine?

Gupitoos wrote: »

Ecgberht_confused wrote: »

It will hit slightly above concealed, at the expense of (1) a dedicated 5 piece set and (2) a skill line that you'd normally subclass away. I think NBs can have this one!

The numbers you're writing above are not possible unless they're against players with pve gear, or no gear at all tbh

All you have to do is go on YouTube and watch the dozens of videos out already by various different streamers showcasing the absurd damage swallow soul does on PTS currently. They’re wearing stuff like soulcleaver and oakfathers. Isn’t it hypocritical to cry about DK whips and WW damage but when your class gets buffed to overpeform it’s fine?

1) Not my class, though I do dabble with NB every once in a while

2) I didn't cry about DK whips or WW damage

3) Youtube is not a metric anyone should trust. On live, with soulcleaver, about 23k pen, and a ton of critical damage my SS crits for about 6k against players in proper pvp gear. I suspect with the buff and at 100% health that might crit for 8k. Nothing comparable to the 15k I used to get from whip or power lash from permablocking DKs