About Cloak and it's many counters...

Lava_Croft

Please reduce the amount of counters there are for Cloak. There's two 'tanky' classes in this game and two 'mobile' classes. The 'tanky' classes come with reliable self-heals and sometimes good shields, but lack any kind of escape skill. The 'mobile' classes come without reliable self-heals and one of them without good shields (let's ignore the "MagSorc OP" situation here), but they make up for this by both having a class defining escape skill.

The problem is the Nightblade's escape skill for some reason has a multitude of hard counters that make it near impossible to actually make use of said escape skill. While I understand that there's a fine line between useful and overpowered when it comes to Cloaking on demand, I'd like to see something change about this situation.

One example is lowering the amount of hard counters to Cloak while increasing the usage cost, or applying a cost increase system like the one Sorcerers are familiar with.

I'm ready for all the scrubs to complain about Cloak OP, so bring it on!

Erondil

Tbh I'm fine with cloak atm. The main issue imo is that it breaks if you receive more than 4 projectiles which is annoying (and not working as intended I guess).
Mark is a pain in the ass (no slot for purge) but I manage to kill the one who marked me first.
Not a lot of players are using detects pots in EU at least so its ok
Revealing flare is really a *** skill lol.
Cloak breaks often if I use it melee in 1vX due to the aoes and charge skills. But shadow image is your friend

Laerwen

There are 3 counters that I know of, all of them are very buggy.

1) Flare - It will reveal you, but you can cloak right back up while standing in the middle of it.
2) Detect Pots - You have to nuthug the Nightblade for these to work.
3) Mage Light - I dont use it because negative 5% magicka is absurd, so I cant speak to it's effectiveness.

MrGhosty

I fully agree, I've stopped even slotting cloak because it seems like beyond the very rare occasion it works, it doesn't work the next 10 times or so. I would actually prefer they get rid of the complete invisibility and make it looks much how cloak looks to allies. It would make you harder to see without giving complete invisibility which would allow to make other aspects of the skill stronger without rustling too many jimmies.

If it gained more usefulness and reliability as is, I'd be ok with a ramping use cost similar to bolt escape.

I think the problem is, there are some very talented NBs out there that have made the most of what they have and only engage when the situation favors them. To those who die to those players I can see how our skills would be considered overpowered, but it feels like you have to build in a very particular way and only engage in specific situations.

Erondil

Laerwen wrote: »

There are 3 counters that I know of, all of them are very buggy.

1) Flare - It will reveal you, but you can cloak right back up while standing in the middle of it.
2) Detect Pots - You have to nuthug the Nightblade for these to work.
3) Mage Light - I dont use it because negative 5% magicka is absurd, so I cant speak to it's effectiveness.

+
Piercing mark (NB skill)
Aoes
Every charges
Curse/Magickal detonation

MrGhosty wrote: »

I fully agree, I've stopped even slotting cloak because it seems like beyond the very rare occasion it works, it doesn't work the next 10 times or so. I would actually prefer they get rid of the complete invisibility and make it looks much how cloak looks to allies. It would make you harder to see without giving complete invisibility which would allow to make other aspects of the skill stronger without rustling too many jimmies.

If it gained more usefulness and reliability as is, I'd be ok with a ramping use cost similar to bolt escape.

I think the problem is, there are some very talented NBs out there that have made the most of what they have and only engage when the situation favors them. To those who die to those players I can see how our skills would be considered overpowered, but it feels like you have to build in a very particular way and only engage in specific situations.

Personally I rarely use it directly in the melee. Roll dodge + cloak works 80% of the time and Shadow image + cloak works 95% of the time

Assilma

The only one that really bothers me is Detection Potions, because merely the Q button renders the cloak skill useless within a 20m radius, for 31 seconds. At least the rest of the counters require reasonably skillful/intelligent play (i.e., you have to root the person out with AOE, place your velocious curse before the cloak is activated, or throw your caltrops at the right location).

rfennell_ESO

Eh most casts that are cast before the NB "disappears" will hit the nightblade.

Even if it's in the process of being cast.

I'm not sure if they intended dark cloak to be what some want it to be.

Cody

I think a potion should not break cloak.

that is it though in my opinion. everything else I am fine with.

jmoore59

Make detect potion work on regular stealth and make cloak immune. The rest of the hard counters are fine.

Nivzruo_ESO

I gank and run with about 3-5 guys regularly( All NBs), and each of us has something diff we do to make cloak "work", maybe it's just in our heads maybe each toon has an affinity for a diff set up- who knows. Here's some of the things we do, roll dodge> cloak ; shadow image> cloak; fear>cloak; blure/evasion>cloak; And I myself jsut double tap it for 2 quick cloaks then hit stealth.. none of these are 100%, heck most are 50/50 at best.. find what is most comfortable to you.

Domander

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Please reduce the amount of counters there are for Cloak. There's two 'tanky' classes in this game and two 'mobile' classes. The 'tanky' classes come with reliable self-heals and sometimes good shields, but lack any kind of escape skill. The 'mobile' classes come without reliable self-heals and one of them without good shields (let's ignore the "MagSorc OP" situation here), but they make up for this by both having a class defining escape skill.

The problem is the Nightblade's escape skill for some reason has a multitude of hard counters that make it near impossible to actually make use of said escape skill. While I understand that there's a fine line between useful and overpowered when it comes to Cloaking on demand, I'd like to see something change about this situation.

One example is lowering the amount of hard counters to Cloak while increasing the usage cost, or applying a cost increase system like the one Sorcerers are familiar with.

I'm ready for all the scrubs to complain about Cloak OP, so bring it on!

The 2 mobile classes can be as Tanky as the others, yet still have the mobility to flee at will.

Xsorus

I play my nightblade mainly now, and I gotta say...without Detect Pots....Nightblades would be insanely overpowered with Cloak.

pppontus

I can't believe how people suggest that detect pots shouldn't counter cloak. You are aware that if you continue spamming cloak while detect potted every skill still misses you because that's how cloak functions?

I've done some silly damn things with cloak, that is one skill that is extremely powerful and needs a hard counter, plus you do have to give up your potion CD for it.

If you have such a hard time using cloak, you're definitely doing it wrong and maybe all of the people who succeed with using it.. aren't the scrubs?

There is a counter to everything, if you can't take that.. well, too bad.

Xsorus

If detect pots didn't exist, you'd end up with basically Thief Stealth from GW2, which was insanely overpowered as well.

Lava_Croft

It's better, easier and more effective to just dump everything into Stamina and dodge roll.

Lava_Croft

pppontus wrote: »

There is a counter to everything, if you can't take that.. well, too bad.

There's no counter to dodge rolling nor is there a counter to Bolt Escape and certainly not a list of counters for both.

Sublime

Curse, Magicka Detonation and all AOE's countter roll dodge, Bolt Escape however doesn't have one, unfortunately I can't think of one that would make sense. How do you want to prevent somebody from teleporting apart from stunning, in order to actually negate the effect you somehow would have to teleport the caster back to the original position. The DK's Fiery Grip is probably what comes the closest to a possible counter, but the fact that it gets absorbed by the BOL and applies free CC-immunity (which means you can only pull the SR once) makes it absolutely useless.

I'm toying with the idea of making the pull unblockable/not give CC-immunity, but it would be a huge buff for Stamina builds since they could just dodge it whereas Magicka builds are doomed, on top of that I'm afraid of getting pulled into bombsquads. On the other hand pulling players out of bombsquads does sound like a lot of fun. To Keep the discussion focused on cloak I decided to open a seperate thread about countering Bolt Escape.

The problem I see with cloak right now is that, right now it only works reliably if you are isolated, i.e. not recieving any damage at the moment of the activation and this can only reliably be achieved by using Shadow Image. There are obviously already quite some counters, but removing some of them would give NB's the ability to completely decide when they want to fight and when not, allowing them to exploit their ins and outs, making them untargetable oneshotters because they could spend everything into the offensive.

LegacyDM

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/166023/the-most-common-ways-nb-cloak-and-stealth-can-be-countered#latest

All the counters to cloak. Compared to other classes o-s*** skills NB cloak is a joke and it's still buggy as hell with no fix in site. ZOS turns a blind eye to it and says working as intended. Yet, I'm still stuck in detected mode half the time which leads me to not being able to escape effectivly.

NB has no class shield skill/spell
NB has no big instant heal
NB has no effective escape (cloak is a joke)
NB burst is mitigated to virtually nothing by a simple click of a button and other classes shield stacking abilities.

Only thing we get is fear and dodge rolling which the community is now screaming for nerf.

This class blows ass. Wish I had rolled a sorc at launch instead. I currently shelved my NB and am playing catch up with a sorc.

Tankqull

Erondil wrote: »

Laerwen wrote: »

There are 3 counters that I know of, all of them are very buggy.

1) Flare - It will reveal you, but you can cloak right back up while standing in the middle of it.
2) Detect Pots - You have to nuthug the Nightblade for these to work.
3) Mage Light - I dont use it because negative 5% magicka is absurd, so I cant speak to it's effectiveness.

+
Piercing mark (NB skill)
Aoes
Every charges
Curse/Magickal detonation

MrGhosty wrote: »

I fully agree, I've stopped even slotting cloak because it seems like beyond the very rare occasion it works, it doesn't work the next 10 times or so. I would actually prefer they get rid of the complete invisibility and make it looks much how cloak looks to allies. It would make you harder to see without giving complete invisibility which would allow to make other aspects of the skill stronger without rustling too many jimmies.

If it gained more usefulness and reliability as is, I'd be ok with a ramping use cost similar to bolt escape.

I think the problem is, there are some very talented NBs out there that have made the most of what they have and only engage when the situation favors them. To those who die to those players I can see how our skills would be considered overpowered, but it feels like you have to build in a very particular way and only engage in specific situations.

Personally I rarely use it directly in the melee. Roll dodge + cloak works 80% of the time and Shadow image + cloak works 95% of the time

reuse cloak ~1,5sec after your first usage and charges will not do dmg to you and not destealth you as cloak provides a ~1sec invulnability.
reuse cloak before them exploading and you will not be destealthed or harmed.
in short cloak is a highly skill [aka awareness] related ability wich only provide its power if you know what you are doing.

Sacadon

Lava_Croft wrote: »

pppontus wrote: »

There is a counter to everything, if you can't take that.. well, too bad.

There's no counter to dodge rolling nor is there a counter to Bolt Escape and certainly not a list of counters for both.

At this point I just want ZOS to clarify what we should expect from cloak. They always answer one-offs and the mechanics of "invisible" are still very open to interpretation because of it.

Derra

Detect pots are the only vaible option for ranged classes to even try to kill a magica NB.

Everything else requires you to change your entire build to slot abilities that are only useful to counter one ability of one class - thats not the definition of balance thats overpowered.

Magelight is only an option for melee players to begin with and flare has a terrible traveltime which makes it completely useless offensively (this could be tweaked to be instant with a smaller radius though).

ToRelax

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/166023/the-most-common-ways-nb-cloak-and-stealth-can-be-countered#latest

All the counters to cloak. Compared to other classes o-s*** skills NB cloak is a joke and it's still buggy as hell with no fix in site. ZOS turns a blind eye to it and says working as intended. Yet, I'm still stuck in detected mode half the time which leads me to not being able to escape effectivly.

NB has no class shield skill/spell
NB has no big instant heal
NB has no effective escape (cloak is a joke)
NB burst is mitigated to virtually nothing by a simple click of a button and other classes shield stacking abilities.

Only thing we get is fear and dodge rolling which the community is now screaming for nerf.

This class blows ass. Wish I had rolled a sorc at launch instead. I currently shelved my NB and am playing catch up with a sorc.

TBH, if you rolled Sorc, you'd probably be crying about NBs right now. Cloak alone is not an effective escape, no, but same with Bolt Escape. If I Bolt without Hardened Ward and roll dodge occasionally, it will just get me killed usually same if you spam Cloak desperately without Fear, Shadow Image and roll dodge.

eliisra

Lava_Croft wrote: »

There's two 'tanky' classes in this game and two 'mobile' classes.

But there are no tanky classes in 1.6. Why this old argument about DK's + temps survivability is a bit outdated.

Only thing that prevents death in PvP right now is escapes, mobility and dodge-roll spam. Blocking, healing, spamming shields scaling of health, only prolongs your life a few seconds when focused. Stuff hits to hard, you cant tank in a traditional way, especially not as a templar.

Also why magicka DK's and templars have started to depend on Mist Form to stay alive, something that clearly comes with other penalties.

I can sort of agree with one thing. Dodge-roll and Bolt Escape are more reliable ways to stay alive than just cloak as a magicka NB. But I rather see magicka NB's with more burst or better heals, than removing counters to cloak.

Xsorus

Lava_Croft wrote: »

pppontus wrote: »

There is a counter to everything, if you can't take that.. well, too bad.

There's no counter to dodge rolling nor is there a counter to Bolt Escape and certainly not a list of counters for both.

Radiant Destruction is pretty much the counter to Dodge Rolling...same with Flame Whip from DKs

Curses ect ect...

pppontus

Lava_Croft wrote: »

pppontus wrote: »

There is a counter to everything, if you can't take that.. well, too bad.

There's no counter to dodge rolling nor is there a counter to Bolt Escape and certainly not a list of counters for both.

Dude, last thread we were in I listed you the counters to both these which you ignored (I guess you don't want to see them?)

Dodge Roll

• Whip
• Concealed Weapon
• Teleport Strike
• Velocious Curse
• Biting Jabs
• And all other AOEs

Bolt Escape

• Gap Closers
• ALL non-projectiles

I play both Magicka and Stamina NB as well as Sorc, DK and Templar in PvP. If I am countered properly I die, no matter which class I play. If outnumbered:

DK/Templar -> fear -> die.
Mag NB -> detect pot -> die.
Stam NB -> whip -> die.
Sorc -> crit rush -> die.

Most common counters that is. It sucks to have your entire playstyle countered, but pretty much everything has a counter. Even the clouding swarm jesus beam that some templars have adopted. It's *** annoying, but I'm not gonna cry about it. Just /applaud and move on to the next victim.

akray21

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Please reduce the amount of counters there are for Cloak. There's two 'tanky' classes in this game and two 'mobile' classes. The 'tanky' classes come with reliable self-heals and sometimes good shields, but lack any kind of escape skill. The 'mobile' classes come without reliable self-heals and one of them without good shields (let's ignore the "MagSorc OP" situation here), but they make up for this by both having a class defining escape skill.

The problem is the Nightblade's escape skill for some reason has a multitude of hard counters that make it near impossible to actually make use of said escape skill. While I understand that there's a fine line between useful and overpowered when it comes to Cloaking on demand, I'd like to see something change about this situation.

One example is lowering the amount of hard counters to Cloak while increasing the usage cost, or applying a cost increase system like the one Sorcerers are familiar with.

I'm ready for all the scrubs to complain about Cloak OP, so bring it on!

My build revolves around lowering the cost of cloak, so I hope they never implement a cost increase like sorc bolt escape...

Erock25

Certainly don't nerf NB, but anyone complaining about their NB not being effective enough (and this includes Cloak) really needs to step their game up. I ran out of my stack of Detect Pots recently and any decent NB can basically disappear at will.

cozmon3c_ESO

Detection potions may be 20m radius to detect stealth but you NB's have increased stealth by like 15m so in order for people to see you with a detect pot they must be within 5m of you, aka right on top of you.

i chase cloakers a lot with detect pots because litterally its the best counter to cloak and stealth not because its a pot, but because its not a damn toggle ability or a terrible long animation cast ability. i dont have to sacrifice a slot on my bar for it.

i find these cloakers by standing nearly on them for them to stay visible with a detect pot and if they use cloak again, yes they are still visible but they are immune to damage they recieve during that period. hit them square with a frag, they take no damage or get knocked down. yes detect pots suck but cloak negates all the damage you take anyway.

Lava_Croft

I'll just give up.

LegacyDM

ToRelax wrote: »

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/166023/the-most-common-ways-nb-cloak-and-stealth-can-be-countered#latest

All the counters to cloak. Compared to other classes o-s*** skills NB cloak is a joke and it's still buggy as hell with no fix in site. ZOS turns a blind eye to it and says working as intended. Yet, I'm still stuck in detected mode half the time which leads me to not being able to escape effectivly.

NB has no class shield skill/spell
NB has no big instant heal
NB has no effective escape (cloak is a joke)
NB burst is mitigated to virtually nothing by a simple click of a button and other classes shield stacking abilities.

Only thing we get is fear and dodge rolling which the community is now screaming for nerf.

This class blows ass. Wish I had rolled a sorc at launch instead. I currently shelved my NB and am playing catch up with a sorc.

TBH, if you rolled Sorc, you'd probably be crying about NBs right now. Cloak alone is not an effective escape, no, but same with Bolt Escape. If I Bolt without Hardened Ward and roll dodge occasionally, it will just get me killed usually same if you spam Cloak desperately without Fear, Shadow Image and roll dodge.

Lol, I don't think so. Sorcs just zip zip zip around, stunning everything in their path with their infinite damage absorbing shield stacking + hardened ward. Friggen noobs escape all the time. You can't even think of comparing BE to a broken mechanic like cloak.

LegacyDM

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I'll just give up.

Don't give up, just bump my thread to remind people how many rediculous counters there are to cloak and they should l2p, rather than cry nerf to an already broken useless mechanic, compared to all other equivalent class skills.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/166023/the-most-common-ways-nb-cloak-and-stealth-can-be-countered#latest