Xenon

wtf is bethblog....???????

The only way to reliably sneak attack someone at in melee range while they are looking in your general direction would be to use invisibility instead of sneak.... And you have to roll a Nightblade for access to the Shadow Cloak active ability and/or the Consuming Darkness ultimate ability (that also grant the synergy Slip Away to allies). - The only two abilities in the game that grant Invisibility (at this point anyway, might or might not get an invisibility ability in a future Dark Brotherhood skill line)

there is no "sneak skill". everyone have the same sneak. everyone can sneak up and sneak attack someone. you will never be spotted as long as you stay behind your target. what this passive ability does is that it reduce the distance from where you can be spotted if they turn to face you... what do you mean muscle, of course you can sneak attack same level mobs. you just have to... you know... sneak up on them first (you can also sneak attack them with a bow from long range). Nobody will spot you as long as nobody is looking in your general direction....

watching a video now... ...and in this it sure look like he take one swing with the right hand weapon followed by a swing by the left hand weapon (clicking left mouse button automatically alternate which hand you attack with). power swings (holding left mouse button) is a backhand swing attack that take longer time to execute and holding right mouse button bring up both weapons to block incoming attacks...

i think we might be talking about two different things here. I think you might be talking about how long (or many frames) the actual swing animation is...? i am not talking about how long the animation is. I am talking about how fast you can attack. when i say swing [or attack] speed for melee (or rate of fire for bow and staff) i mean the number of swings you can do (or number of arrows or fireballs you can fire) within a set time-frame (like one minute). traditionally two handed weapons (and heavy crossbows) have a slower swing speed (or slower rate of fire) and one hand weapons (and bows) have a faster swing speed (or rate of fire). But even if we are talking animation length, no - it does not make sense that a one hand axe should have an equally long swing animation as a two handed axe. it should have a shorter and more rapid animation that take less time to play. it is a lighter weapon. easier to control. Traditionally daggers have the shortest animations (and highest swing speed), followed by one handed swords, one handed axe, one handed mace, two handed blades, two handed axe and last two handed mace (with the longest animations and slowest swing or attack speed) In the time it take to make 30 swings with a slow two handed mace you would [should] have done at least 60 swings while dual wielding a couple of fast daggers.

are you seriously telling me that in eso a two handed mace have the same swing speed as dual daggers.....?

I thought Dual Wield alternated normal attacks from left and right hand each time you pressed the left mouse button and you can press the left mouse button faster when dual wielding than if you wield a 2h weapon?

Radius and Radii then? Radiuses??

But the Sorc tank would get access to Bound Armor and/or Lightning Form - both costing Magicka rather than Stamina (so you basically double dip into two resources to increase your survivability). Sorcerers passives can reduce both stamina and magicka cost of all abilities as well as giving him better magicka regeneration -so he would probably have an easier time to keep up Annulment against a boss that is a caster. You can also play a redguard sorcerer tank just like you can play a redguard DK tank, so the passive stamina recovery from race is not really an issue when comparing two base classes... Having said that, I do think DK make better tanks; but that assumption is only based on the defensive nature of all draconic power passives (and the rather long duration of spiked armor making it rather easy to keep up 24/7). Not before end game, no. And not even at max level -at release. I have the feeling that ESO is more "casual" friendly that let you play whatever style you want and still be somewhat efficient. That there will be little or no need to play highly optimized race-class-weapon-role combinations. From what little dungeon crawling I've seen it seem as if you can get away without having a dedicated tank at all... shrug But eventually, maybe... That all comes down to how much time and effort ESO is willing to spend just to cater the top 5% elitist crowd. It is a two fold issue. If you don't cater for them then they will leave for another game that will offer more high end challenges -and that might start a downward spiral. If you cater them too much then you will pour resources into areas that the majority of the player base will never even experience. If the English plural form of Bonus is Bonuses; What is the English plural form of Focus then...? I always assumed it was Foci. ...is it Focuses?? (English is not my first language)

odds are all instant cast (not channel or cast) abilities take the same time until you can initiate a new ability. - In WoW it was 1.0 seconds or 1.5 seconds (depending on what class you played). Swing speed (and rate of fire for bow and staff standard attacks) for normal and power attacks will probably depend on the weapon. - One hand daggers being faster and more "twitchy" while two hand mace being slower.

A minutes for sure. Half an hour maybe. Doesn't look to be too complex options though. Then again; Over the years I probably spend hours and hours customizing my characters face, body, clothes, tattoos, personal death theme, spray decal and vehicles in APB and APB:Reloaded.... And I am still not "done"

I am pretty sure the correct plural form of Bonus is Boni. One Bonus. Two Boni. Same as one focus. Two foci. Why you feel that is "very peculiar"? My point was that if you are crawling dungeons that don't really push your limit... then you can probably get away with a lot of stuff. Maybe you don't even need anyone with sword n board and maybe you can get away with a restoration staff as a back up weapon or maybe a DPS templar (without restoration staff) that only have a single heal-related ability on his hot bar. Maybe ESO encounters are not even build around having a main tank with the main purpose keeping all mobs away from the healer and minimize party overall damage taken while DPS do their thing without standing still in fire and a single dedicated healer spam healing the tank, preferable from a safe distance. But IF there will be dungeons that really push the limit. Where you need every buff you can get. Every advantage. THEN it feel very natural to select a tank that focused all his attribute points into health. That picked dragon knight as a starting class. That picked a race with survival focused passive stats (for daggerfall that would be Orc and for Ebonheart that would be Argonian or Nord. All Aldmeri races make equally good tanks). That wield one hand and a shield. Wear heavy armor and only pick a piece of medium if he can fit Evasion on his hot bar and only a single piece of light armor for annulment if a particular boss is a caster. Picked all 5 active skills that focus on taunts and avoid and/or reduce damage taken (in various ways; self heal, shield, buff, debuff, cc....).

1500 health from going all out health or 1000 health from going zero health (and instead magicka and/or stamina) is not that huge either.But if you are going to main tank content that you have not beat yet then everything ads up...small party size of just 4 people might be important that tank and healer can help with dps. But that is assuming eso will have boss encounters with enrage counters or simular time pressure mechanics.

(There are indications you can only spend Max 30 attribute points per attribute)My guess is that regen %is based on your current attribute rating. No matter if it is from character level,attribute points, enchants ore temporary buffs.I have no evidence to back this up. Just a wild guess.

Heavy armor might or might not end up with a lot more armor than medium. Like twice as much mitigation or potentially even a lot more than that. If the survival difference is small than you might as well go medium for more stamina or even light for more magicka. Both stamina and magicka as a resource can be used for dps but also survivability (such as one hand and shield abilities or Dragon Knight class abilities).But then you don't really need a dedicated tank at all in the first place....I think you will need to go mostly plate on dungeons that you are trying to beat and then go mostly medium or even a mix of medium and light for dungeons you already have on farm status. There are no ranged taunt in the game. If it were then we would have the option to build a light tank that would kite, snare and taunt without ever getting hit by melee. Used that a lot in swtor, wow and various lesser known morpgs.

Only reason i see for wearing anything but 7 pieces of heavy armor while being a traditional main tank would be to get access to Evade and/or Annulment (depending on what you are tanking). I don't see any reason to ever wear less than 5 pieces of heavy armor while being a traditional main tank. Enchantments are not restricted to the type of armor-class (light, medium, heavy) you are enchanting (to my knowledge). Why wear armor that offer less survivability...? Do we really have reason to believe that a tank will be so Stamina-starved that he can't keep using Puncture once every 5-7 seconds to keep two-three targets away from the healer...?

good luck keeping it all updated. manually. part time job right there

Yeah. 150 skill points will cover more than enough. But by then we are talking about 50++ (Veteran x2; finding all shards in the whole world... all factions). And I doubt you can morph passive abilities (IIRC passive skills don't have a progress bar). Unclear if Ultimates can be morphed. Some abilities are also FREE (Soul Trap from the World skills Soul Magic line, Ambidexterity from the Race skills Dark Elf line etc...) Basically you only need 10 active skills that you morph and 1 or 2 ultimates. There will be quite a lot of passives that will benefit your build, but a lot of passive skills require that you wield a particular weapon or wear a piece of armor or have abilities from a specific skill line on your hot bar in order to work. This mean you will have enough skill points to build the "perfect" build even without going veteran. But without veteran you would have.... what? ~80 skill points? Race (where we assume that first passive is free), two weapon lines, one armor line, all three class lines (and one morph on each active skill but not on passive and ultimates) = 86 skill points. That is going to be *very* tight.... nothing left for guild or disease lines, another armor or weapon line etc....

This is perfect. Even better than I was hoping for. Thank you.

still not enough to unlock em all without going veteran

Yes. It use the same notation as targeted AoE use (so it is probably not a PBAoE or an aura that follow the dragon knight around), but rather a standard that you can throw up to 15m and have a 12 second duration AoE of 8 meter radius from the point of impact. This is the in-game description of the ability: Darknight Standard I Instant 15 m. range / 8 m. radius 200 Ultimate For 12 seconds, while on Dragonknight Standard I * Enemies take 6 Fire damage every second * Enemies receive 50% less healing * An ally may activate the Shackle ability, damaging and rooting enemies in the area Unlocked at Ardent Flame Rank 12 (I see nothing wrong from the description in the database on this ability.... except maybe that the Shackle Synergy effect: "...deal damage and root enemies *in the [8m radius] area*")

It would be very helpful to have stats at level 1 and how good they scale per level up (and maybe stats at max). But that would be a *nightmare* to keep *updated* as stats are likely to change in every single beta build. You basically need a way to extract the data from the client in an automated way. I might be able to extract such information in the future, but not until the game actually release so i can start probing what information we can and can not pull directly from the servers.... Information you should enter in the database is probably only stuff that is not likely to change very soon - like Range (and area), Cast time and resource used (stamina or magicka, but not resource cost). And after that you should probably just type down a general description that explains what the ability does (Poison DD + short duration Poison DoT with a Snare). Having said that. It I would personally be very interested if you have a spreadsheet or just random level 1 stats in a notepad. If you do then I would love to get a copy (even if the information is already out-dated). I already got stats (such as cast time, range, area, resource being used, resource cost, damage, duration etc) on most abilities by watching several hours of leaked in-game photo, freezing the picture and manually typing it down... but i still miss some. I am also interested in trying to figure out how well abilities scale towards max level. I only have a few skills shown at higher character level than 3 and higher skill level than 1.... and what the different morph options are for each skill. Only got a handful of them so far. This is secondary as how much they scale will probably frequently be changed during the later beta stages.

it cost a skill point to morph a skill. you can only morph a skill once. if my calculations are correct you will NOT have enough skill points to unlock all passive, ultimate, active and morphs. Not by a long shot. You have to think ahead carefully what abilities you want and what abilities you can live without. With additional skill lines from guilds, vampire etc it doesn't even look like you will have enough skill points to unlock everything after you go veteran and run the whole game again at 50+. Even twice, at 50++

fair enough. so the different magicka cost and damage increase i've seen on abilities at rank IV and morphed versions are tied to the higher character rank then rather than the higher skill rank. I need to go back and check what level the character had i think... to get a better and more accurate idea on how fast the various abilities scale. that also explain why a rank 4 skill have the same damage and cost as the level 5 "morphed" version of the skill (but that the morphed skill increase one aspect of the ability... like adding a on next hit damage buff or increased range or whatnot).

we think wearwolf line will have active abilities fueled by magicka like class line abilities or will this skill line have active skills that use stamina as a resource...?