Understanding the Nightblade's Cloak

DeanTheCat

Hello,

Dean the Cat here. I would like to write a small guide on the Nightblade's Cloak, as I have been seeing a lot of misinformation on the true capabilities of this skill floating around recently. Now that introductions are out of the way, let's begin.

First off, I'm going to say this off the bat. Cloak is not a 100% foolproof get out of jail free card. Think of cloak as a dodge with an added benefit of breaking line of sight.

Shadow Cloak (Base Ability):

This ability grants 2.5(2.9 with passive) seconds of Invisibility to the caster.

Dark Cloak (Morph):

This ability grants 2.5(2.9 with passive) seconds of Invisibility to the caster as well as purging 4 damage over time effects and causing up to 4 projectiles to miss during the first second of the ability being cast.

Shadowy Disguise (Morph):

This ability grants 2.5(2.9 with passive) seconds of Invisibility to the caster and ensures the next attack is a critical strike. Ranking up this ability will reduce the Magicka needed to activate this ability.


As you may have noticed, Dark Cloak causes up to four projectiles to miss the caster. This allows the Nightblade to dodge projectiles that are otherwise unavoidable, with good examples being Meteor and Searing Strike. However, some attacks are totally unavoidable with Dark Cloak, and attempting to dodge said attack will cause the cloak to fail and fizzle.

List of Abilities that ignore the miss mechanic of cloak:

Spoiler

• Gap Closers (Focused Charge, Teleport Strike, Shield Charge, Critical Charge)
• Daedric Curse
• Magicka Detonation
• Any AoE
• Bolt Escape
• Mage's Fury
• Dragon Leap
• Puncturing Strikes
• Force Pulse
• Burning Embers Heal (This is a bug)

In addition, if Piercing Mark is used on the offending Nightblade, the caster of Piercing Mark's projectile attacks will ignore the miss mechanic of Dark Cloak.

List of Abilities that otherwise are undodgeable without cloak:

Spoiler

• Searing Strike
• Meteor
• Concealed Weapon
• Radiant Destruction (Jesus Beam)
• Soul Assault
• Backlash

For the abilities that ignore the miss mechanic of cloak, it it imperative to pair cloak with a dodgeroll before cloaking, unless you like having failed cloaks. To deal with the delayed damage AoEs (Daedric Curse and Magicka Detonation), count to 3, block, then hit cloak at once again to prevent the caster from reapplying the delayed damage on you. Also, blocking muffles the sound of the explosion as well as suppressing the visual effect, making it harder for the caster to reacquire you to apply the damage again. If the enemy has a detection potion active, you will be visible to the enemy. If you haven't been hit with Piercing Mark, it is possible to simply spam Dark Cloak, and that will ensure that targeted projectile attacks will keep missing, for as long as you have magicka to sustain the cloak spam.

Once you are cloaked, it's about playing a mind game with your enemy. Think of the battle from the enemy's point of view. What would he expect you to do? What would you do in his position, should you be chasing a cloaking Nightblade? Once you have anticipated his response, you can act differently in order to counter it and break expectations. A favourite trick of mine is to dodgeroll a few times to the west, then cloak, and while invisible, change directions. This usually throws your pursuers off your trail, unless one of them is perceptive enough to hear you moving off in the opposite direction (Which is impossible for 99% of players). You may be invisible, but you certainly aren't inaudible.

Well, I hope this rather short guide on the proper application of cloak was useful to you. Good luck on the battlefield.

May your road lead you to warm sands.

Regards,
Dean the Cat

EDIT: Added a few abilities I missed. My bad

Rylana

Cloak and go right back the way you came, always works. People tunnel vision way too much (also provides a soft blind spot for a detect pot spammer, since they cant see behind themselves without panning around)

If I could enumerate the amount of times some charging moron that was obviously just looking to get right on top of me and be "in my face" only to see me cloak in front of them, charge to where i was, and me to come out behind them out of their visual arc.... virtually where i started as they run around confused... lets just say id be counting for a while (its especially hilarious on a botched gank when the guy calls friends and youre right where you initially opened from observing them combing the countryside 30 meters away)

Flawlless

I remember Sypher saying one time that it's important to gain distance before attempting to cloak away otherwise you'll just be spamming it and wasting magicka, that advice has helped me a lot personally.

vortexman11

Just a bug everyone should be aware of, the DragonKnight skill Burning Embers takes Nightblades out of cloak, as soon as they cloak to purge it and the heal procs, they instantly come out of cloak.

God_flakes

Rylana wrote: »

Cloak and go right back the way you came, always works. People tunnel vision way too much (also provides a soft blind spot for a detect pot spammer, since they cant see behind themselves without panning around)

If I could enumerate the amount of times some charging moron that was obviously just looking to get right on top of me and be "in my face" only to see me cloak in front of them, charge to where i was, and me to come out behind them out of their visual arc.... virtually where i started as they run around confused... lets just say id be counting for a while (its especially hilarious on a botched gank when the guy calls friends and youre right where you initially opened from observing them combing the countryside 30 meters away)

That is unless you're running from a pain train of 24 enemies all spammin aoe. Haha

Sacadon

Good post as most of the time it's misinformed or expectations (right/wrong) that frustrate cloak users.

Would be good to get the lists of cans/cannots comprehensive. I don't see Force Shock in there and prob a few more.

DeanTheCat

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll make edits later (Currently on a phone browser). I apologise for missing a few abilities, didn't think of them at the time I wrote this guide.

My bad.

EDIT: I edited the OP to reflect my missed info.