Riftstalker / Nightblade PVP Build - Broken in PVP

[overbyte]

Devs,

This is the build (variants exist): http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...ogRss.VcdcuR0o

44 points in Nightblade, 22 points in Riftstalker.

Problem:

This build exploits the fact that most of the useful tanking abilities in the Riftstalker tree are:
1) Available for a modest investment in the RS tree
2) Can be used when the rogue is using his dps aura instead of his tanking aura

This results in creating a PVP build that is grossly imbalanced (there's a video in the PVP forums of a Rank 2 RS/NB nearly defeating a Rank 8 warrior in a duel - less than 5% health left on the warrior).

A rogue with this build has:
6 seconds of 100% damage reduction
8 seconds of 80% damage reduction
4 seconds of 50% damage reduction
10 seconds of 30% damage reduction
Indefinite 15% damage REFLECTION
Indefinite 36% damage reduction
Indefinite 15% fire/death damage reduction
4 second self-heal for 50% hp


This build has 51% damage mitigation on top of valor with 100% uptime. When using cooldowns, this build has 28 seconds of 65-100% damage reduction, on top of valor. This can be repeated every 2 minutes, worst case.

This is does not include the self-heal this build has.

Against a mage (pyromancer, warlock, necromancer), this build has a passive 66% damage reduction, on top of valor, basically giving this build upwards of 80-90% passive damage mitigation.

As a result of this, most rogues don't even bother with using the guardian phase and stick to using their DPS aura (stalker phase).

To give an analogy, this would be similar to increasing the duration of Neddra's Essence (85% damage reduction for 7 seconds) by over 4x AND reducing the cooldown by 50%.


Here's what this build grants in terms of defensive abilities:
- Blackout - 6 seconds of 100% damage immunity with no damage output reduction, 2 minute cooldown
- Twillight Transcendence - 50% damage reduction + 50% heal over 4 seconds, 2 minute cooldown
- Twilight Shelter - 80% damage reduction, 40% damage output reduction, lasts 8 seconds, 2 minute cooldown
- Fire/Death Attunement - 15% death/fire damage reduction, passive
- Guardian Phase, 30% damage reduction, +50% armor,+50 resist, +30% endurance, no cooldown
- Exceptional Resilience, passive 6% damage reduction
- Rift Guard - 15% damage absorption shield up to 50%hp, lasts 30 seconds, no cooldown
- Rift Barrier - 15% damage REFLECTION shield up to 50%hp, lasts 15 seconds, 13 second cooldown (effective)
- Planar Refuge - 30% damage reduction, lasts 10 seconds, 2 minute cooldown


Developers, I submit to you this is a game-breaking PVP build that needs to be brought into line post-haste.


I'd recommend:
- changing Blackout to reduce incoming AND outgoing damage by 100%, and increasing run speed by 30% and making the rogue immune to all CC. This should be a defensive ability. It's currently used as an offensive one.
- remove the damage reduction portion of Fire and Death attunement. This unfairly punishes classes that use fire and death damage (who dont have any similar abilities or talents).
- change Rift Barrier, Rift Guard and Planar Refuge to require Guardian Phase to be used. These are tanking abilities and should be restricted to tanking use. They are currently used heavily in DPS modes and are breaking PVP.
- Decrease the 'damage caused' portion of Guardian Phase to 30%, increase the threat to 230% and also give the aura a stacking 0.7% damage buff to all party and raid members to compensate for the DPS loss

These changes would still allow the build to maintain its tremendous damage reduction abilities but at the cost of damage output without impacting the tanking abilities in the tree.

Edit: The most recent proposed changes on the PTS exacerbate the problem.

[Bloodbourne]

This is absurd... brb going to go faceroll 3-5 people at once on my p3 geared rogue alt.

[Anathemus]

This is absurd... brb going to go faceroll 3-5 people at once on my p3 geared rogue alt.

Come on guys. Nobody at P6 is gonna get rolled by anything at P3 unless they keysteer and have no idea about the game at all. It all still boils down to gear. Rank up and cut the nonsense.

[Eughe]

Come on guys. Nobody at P6 is gonna get rolled by anything at P3 unless they keysteer and have no idea about the game at all. It all still boils down to gear. Rank up and cut the nonsense.

All you need is a pve planar set and a relic weapon and you can.

[Anathemus]

All you need is a pve planar set and a relic weapon and you can.

I don't speaky pve, so I don't know what your talking about. However, props on that sig man. That creepy troll Zyzyx was in need a good spoofing.

[Acex]

Devs,

This is the build (variants exist): http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0M...ogRss.VcdcuR0o

44 points in Nightblade, 22 points in Riftstalker.

Problem:

This build exploits the fact that most of the useful tanking abilities in the Riftstalker tree are:
1) Available for a modest investment in the RS tree
2) Can be used when the rogue is using his dps aura instead of his tanking aura

This results in creating a PVP build that is grossly imbalanced (there's a video in the PVP forums of a Rank 2 RS/NB nearly defeating a Rank 8 warrior in a duel - less than 5% health left on the warrior).

A rogue with this build has:
6 seconds of 100% damage reduction
8 seconds of 80% damage reduction
4 seconds of 50% damage reduction
10 seconds of 30% damage reduction
Indefinite 15% damage REFLECTION
Indefinite 36% damage reduction
Indefinite 15% fire/death damage reduction
4 second self-heal for 50% hp


This build has 51% damage mitigation on top of valor with 100% uptime. When using cooldowns, this build has 28 seconds of 65-100% damage reduction, on top of valor. This can be repeated every 2 minutes, worst case.

This is does not include the self-heal this build has.

Against a mage (pyromancer, warlock, necromancer), this build has a passive 66% damage reduction, on top of valor, basically giving this build upwards of 80-90% passive damage mitigation.

As a result of this, most rogues don't even bother with using the guardian phase and stick to using their DPS aura (stalker phase).

To give an analogy, this would be similar to increasing the duration of Neddra's Essence (85% damage reduction for 7 seconds) by over 4x AND reducing the cooldown by 50%.


Here's what this build grants in terms of defensive abilities:
- Blackout - 6 seconds of 100% damage immunity with no damage output reduction, 2 minute cooldown
- Twillight Transcendence - 50% damage reduction + 50% heal over 4 seconds, 2 minute cooldown
- Twilight Shelter - 80% damage reduction, 40% damage output reduction, lasts 8 seconds, 2 minute cooldown
- Fire/Death Attunement - 15% death/fire damage reduction, passive
- Guardian Phase, 30% damage reduction, +50% armor,+50 resist, +30% endurance, no cooldown
- Exceptional Resilience, passive 6% damage reduction
- Rift Guard - 15% damage absorption shield up to 50%hp, lasts 30 seconds, no cooldown
- Rift Barrier - 15% damage REFLECTION shield up to 50%hp, lasts 15 seconds, 13 second cooldown (effective)
- Planar Refuge - 30% damage reduction, lasts 10 seconds, 2 minute cooldown


Developers, I submit to you this is a game-breaking PVP build that needs to be brought into line post-haste.


I'd recommend:
- changing Blackout to reduce incoming AND outgoing damage by 100%, and increasing run speed by 30% and making the rogue immune to all CC. This should be a defensive ability. It's currently used as an offensive one.
- remove the damage reduction portion of Fire and Death attunement. This unfairly punishes classes that use fire and death damage (who dont have any similar abilities or talents).
- change Rift Barrier, Rift Guard and Planar Refuge to require Guardian Phase to be used. These are tanking abilities and should be restricted to tanking use. They are currently used heavily in DPS modes and are breaking PVP.
- Decrease the 'damage caused' portion of Guardian Phase to 30%, increase the threat to 230% and also give the aura a stacking 0.7% damage buff to all party and raid members to compensate for the DPS loss

These changes would still allow the build to maintain its tremendous damage reduction abilities but at the cost of damage output without impacting the tanking abilities in the tree.

Edit: The most recent proposed changes on the PTS exacerbate the problem.

That warrior in video wasn't even r6.

And Guardian phase reduces damage Rogue does not dmg taken.

[Bloodbourne]

Come on guys. Nobody at P6 is gonna get rolled by anything at P3 unless they keysteer and have no idea about the game at all. It all still boils down to gear. Rank up and cut the nonsense.

I'm pretty sure I can kill anything that is p6+ except another rogue, considering I can take on 3+ people, without a care in the world. I just fought a p6+ chlorolock, took well over a full minute but we ended up killing eachother at the same time. Healers(clerics) can be tough but they wont kill me either.

That warrior in video wasn't even r6.

And Guardian phase reduces damage Rogue does not dmg taken.

Armor and resists don't decrease dmg taken???? **** I've been tanking the wrong way this whole time >.<

[Anathemus]

I'm pretty sure I can kill anything that is p6+ except another rogue, considering I can take on 3+ people, without a care in the world. I just fought a p6+ chlorolock, took well over a full minute but we ended up killing eachother at the same time. Healers(clerics) can be tough but they wont kill me either.



Armor and resists don't decrease dmg taken???? **** I've been tanking the wrong way this whole time >.<

isn't the same as having a video to prove it lol. Any good player in any viable pvp spec at P6+ is gonna trash you at P3.

[Bloodbourne]

Last two WF's I did.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...020092531.jpg/ Not the best, but was top dmg til the very end.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...020094853.jpg/ Better, I'd only done a couple WF's before these with this spec, and havent played my rogue since July. (Rogue near the top is a p8 marksman.)

The spec is absurdly overpowered.

Nightblade is NOT OP.

Riftstalker is NOT OP.

Them TOGETHER... IS OP. Fix, please.

[handerhank]

Anyone who has used or fought this build knows it is beyond OP.

Restricting all the defensive goodies in RS to the guardian phase would fix this overnight - without impacting PvE.

[zavarius]

Devs,


Here's what this build grants in terms of defensive abilities:
- Blackout - 6 seconds of 100% damage immunity with no damage output reduction, 2 minute cooldown
- Twillight Transcendence - 50% damage reduction + 50% heal over 4 seconds, 2 minute cooldown
- Twilight Shelter - 80% damage reduction, 40% damage output reduction, lasts 8 seconds, 2 minute cooldown
- Fire/Death Attunement - 15% death/fire damage reduction, passive
- Guardian Phase, 30% damage reduction, +50% armor,+50 resist, +30% endurance, no cooldown
- Exceptional Resilience, passive 6% damage reduction
- Rift Guard - 15% damage absorption shield up to 50%hp, lasts 30 seconds, no cooldown
- Rift Barrier - 15% damage REFLECTION shield up to 50%hp, lasts 15 seconds, 13 second cooldown (effective)
- Planar Refuge - 30% damage reduction, lasts 10 seconds, 2 minute cooldown

Wow this combination of buffs is way OP. It needs the nerfbat immediately. If Trion would only give us some way to remove these buffs then NB/RS would no longer be invincible. Maybe in 1.6 Trion will create some sort of ability for players to remove buffs.

BTW, Guardian phase is 30% reduction to damage output not 30% reduction to damage taken, nice try tho

[overbyte]

Anyone who has used or fought this build knows it is beyond OP.

Restricting all the defensive goodies in RS to the guardian phase would fix this overnight - without impacting PvE.

Agreed - it's something that can easily be hotfixed with 0 impact to tanking.

However, I still argue that Blackout is overpowered. It's a lesson learned from the early wow days: full damage output while having 100% invulnerability is a bad PVP mechanic, even if it can be dispelled. It should always be a trade-off.

[Vaine]

Wow this combination of buffs is way OP. It needs the nerfbat immediately. If Trion would only give us some way to remove these buffs then NB/RS would no longer be invincible. Maybe in 1.6 Trion will create some sort of ability for players to remove buffs.

BTW, Guardian phase is 30% reduction to damage output not 30% reduction to damage taken, nice try tho

I agree ... you hear that trion ... please remove cooldowns on purges. This will solve all our NB/RS problems

[overbyte]

Wow this combination of buffs is way OP. It needs the nerfbat immediately. If Trion would only give us some way to remove these buffs then NB/RS would no longer be invincible. Maybe in 1.6 Trion will create some sort of ability for players to remove buffs.

BTW, Guardian phase is 30% reduction to damage output not 30% reduction to damage taken, nice try tho

You are correct - my bad. I had read that talent a bunch of times and kept on misreading it. Guardian phase is just +50% armor, +30% endurance, +50 all resistances (and +200% threat).

I double checked the rest - it's all accurate.

[Bloodbourne]

Wow this combination of buffs is way OP. It needs the nerfbat immediately. If Trion would only give us some way to remove these buffs then NB/RS would no longer be invincible. Maybe in 1.6 Trion will create some sort of ability for players to remove buffs.

BTW, Guardian phase is 30% reduction to damage output not 30% reduction to damage taken, nice try tho

I rarely get purged. You'd think people would, but they don't. Guardian phase might not get a pure dmg reduction but it does still have a passive reduction from teh armor increase + resists, not to mention the cushion of added endurance.

Also, you can pop guardian phase, hit your 50% heal then pop back to stalker phase for an OP HoT.