Official Feedback Thread for Nightblades

Lava_Croft

It's been a few days and I still cannot come up with any sane reason why ZOS thinks that locking out the usage of a skill entirely is in any way a good game play mechanic.

bowmanz607

look at the silver lining i guess.

all fotm builds will bounce and only the pros will remain. So no more hate tells when you wreck someone with a stam blade. Now i can laugh in their face when i beat them w/o being thrown into fotm crew. I played stam blade since beta and destroyed people long before it was fotm. I will continue to do so while gimped.

Hey @FENGRUSH come to the dark side. You said you rolled with stam sorc because you like being the underdog. Come hang with stam NB crew for the underdog now . At least stam sorc can still use all its abilities and can get health from crits. Stam blades now have well ummm hmmmm ummmmm a instant cast stam dps which was nerfed and thats about it. Will trade you suprise attack for crit heals

I also think the issues peole have with the new mark is pointless. Why? because i think mag light is still the superior choice over mark target. it is cheaper than mark. you get more passives and buffs from it. it also effects your allies.

FENGRUSH

bowmanz607 wrote: »

look at the silver lining i guess.

all fotm builds will bounce and only the pros will remain. So no more hate tells when you wreck someone with a stam blade. Now i can laugh in their face when i beat them w/o being thrown into fotm crew. I played stam blade since beta and destroyed people long before it was fotm. I will continue to do so while gimped.

Hey @FENGRUSH come to the dark side. You said you rolled with stam sorc because you like being the underdog. Come hang with stam NB crew for the underdog now . At least stam sorc can still use all its abilities and can get health from crits. Stam blades now have well ummm hmmmm ummmmm a instant cast stam dps which was nerfed and thats about it. Will trade you suprise attack for crit heals

I also think the issues peole have with the new mark is pointless. Why? because i think mag light is still the superior choice over mark target. it is cheaper than mark. you get more passives and buffs from it. it also effects your allies.

Lol stam sorc only real separator is streak. I could replace lightning armor with the dual weild skill for speed and run immoveable for resist and gain immoveable on top of it. I could replace crit surge with rally which is arguably better and will probably be better given the amount of increased shields we will see in cyro that it doesnt work on.

The only sorc ability I would have on my bar is streak and frankly, I could make a build without it. I could be the first non-class skill build that anyone can run. Meanwhile Id be rocking some of the worst passive lineup in the game because 1 line is dedicated to pets, the other is dedicated to elemental (lightning magic) which doesnt work for stam or scale with it. The other is based off skills used in that line which we dont use because fragments/mines are not viable.

Stam NB will still have good passives and good damage skills in there! I just started a NB actually, but it will be magicka. The NB passives are absolutely mind blowing. I open up the skill menu every now and then just to remind myself of all of the good passives to use. Its crazy.

bowmanz607

FENGRUSH wrote: »

bowmanz607 wrote: »

look at the silver lining i guess.

all fotm builds will bounce and only the pros will remain. So no more hate tells when you wreck someone with a stam blade. Now i can laugh in their face when i beat them w/o being thrown into fotm crew. I played stam blade since beta and destroyed people long before it was fotm. I will continue to do so while gimped.

Hey @FENGRUSH come to the dark side. You said you rolled with stam sorc because you like being the underdog. Come hang with stam NB crew for the underdog now . At least stam sorc can still use all its abilities and can get health from crits. Stam blades now have well ummm hmmmm ummmmm a instant cast stam dps which was nerfed and thats about it. Will trade you suprise attack for crit heals

I also think the issues peole have with the new mark is pointless. Why? because i think mag light is still the superior choice over mark target. it is cheaper than mark. you get more passives and buffs from it. it also effects your allies.

Lol stam sorc only real separator is streak. I could replace lightning armor with the dual weild skill for speed and run immoveable for resist and gain immoveable on top of it. I could replace crit surge with rally which is arguably better and will probably be better given the amount of increased shields we will see in cyro that it doesnt work on.

The only sorc ability I would have on my bar is streak and frankly, I could make a build without it. I could be the first non-class skill build that anyone can run. Meanwhile Id be rocking some of the worst passive lineup in the game because 1 line is dedicated to pets, the other is dedicated to elemental (lightning magic) which doesnt work for stam or scale with it. The other is based off skills used in that line which we dont use because fragments/mines are not viable.

Stam NB will still have good passives and good damage skills in there! I just started a NB actually, but it will be magicka. The NB passives are absolutely mind blowing. I open up the skill menu every now and then just to remind myself of all of the good passives to use. Its crazy.

wait wait wait...
are you saying you dont run pets??? Your crazy, that is the best part! They go into sneak now! how can you not use that?
Pets are really the only real separator.

bad passives?? come on now. as stated, you have PETS! A whole line for PETS! thats awesome. Additionally, how do you not slot 5-6 storm calling abilities for that weapon power??? that is so OP. I mean really, who needs 20 ult gen when you have PETS and weapon power.

lol ok im done now. just got a little bored.

FENGRUSH

I could slot 5 storm calling abilities and dawnbreaker for that weapon damage boost too and just do dawnbreaker only. Oh wait, it doesnt scale with stamina CP but is reduced by stam CP. damn..

bowmanz607

FENGRUSH wrote: »

I could slot 5 storm calling abilities and dawnbreaker for that weapon damage boost too and just do dawnbreaker only. Oh wait, it doesnt scale with stamina CP but is reduced by stam CP. damn..

no no no. slot all five which give you weapon damage. Then dawn breaker, but put all your points into mag and dot damage. You got to maximize that build!

zyk

Lava_Croft wrote: »

It's been a few days and I still cannot come up with any sane reason why ZOS thinks that locking out the usage of a skill entirely is in any way a good game play mechanic.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@Wrobel
@ZOS_GinaBruno

Yup. Most competent players and groups can already counter cloak easily enough. Almost every group has one or more NB, yet it's rare to see one with mark slotted. Flare can be extremely effective; no one uses it. The current Radiant Magelight is also effective. Everyone has access to detect potions. Of course, there are many other methods such as any AE. No other core class ability can be completely defeated as easily as cloak.

The existing counters are fair enough because the player must choose the counter over other functions. The buff to Magelight removes this choice by making the ability so attractive. Inner Light would be extremely popular with no cloak detect/negate at all.

The upcoming changes to Magelight make it too convenient to have a hard counter to cloak slotted. Either the auxiliary benefits (Empower, Max Magcika) or the cloak disable should be removed. As is, this ability will be too widely used.

Alternatively, please provide enhancements to NB heals and defensive abilities. For example, adjust Swallow Soul so that it heals from damage done to shields.

pcripper39ub17_ESO

Well, there were counters to cloak in the game already that anyone that was in cyrodil more than 20 minutes knew how to use. The problem that this is probably trying to fix is the perma cloaked magic nightblades.

They already had a fix for those if they implemented it. They did it for dodgeroll. They did it for streak, Instead they decide to break a skill that a class was basically designed around.

Right now I deleted my old stam nightblade(Khajiit, crit was already useless and this change wrecks stealthy) and making another that will not even use stealth.

Can I do it, yes. Should I be forced to do it because of a game change that wrecks the whole playstyle the character was designed around? No.

I'm not even salty, just disappointed in the devs for taking this route. Will save 15 bucks a month from now on though.The way I see it is they are trying to turn this game into another Warhammer Online where people quit and they can shut it down.

Joy_Division

I have a NB. It's Alliance rank 13 or something. But I wouldn't call myself a NB player or expert. I will leave my feedback. Take it for what Zos will.

What I like

• Always felt the Path of Darkness stuff was weak once soft caps were removed in 1.6. Appreciate the buff here.
• Appreciate the efforts to make Soul siphon a Healing ultimate. I play a stam who uses Soul Tether so I will leave it for others to comment on the effectiveness of your efforts.
• Debilitate. I hate one-target restriction spells in a game without cooldowns. TY. I still think Crippling grasp is better though as NBs are pretty good with resource managment.
• Catalyst. Appreciate little boosts here and there.

What is mixed:

• Funnel Health. I agree it was way too efficient. Legit reasoning. Not a fan of just flat out nerfs though without giving some other means of compensation.

Cloak Stuff: Where to start? I agree that instant-stealth on demand is too strong and seeing that sorcs streak, DK scales, and templar BoL got nerfed, an adjustment here was probably needed. I think you went overboard though.

• The suppression rather than removal of DoTs thing was fair. DoTs were weak, that's a templar thing, and the other classes got to heal/purge them so not a big issue here.
• I will acknowledge the minor protection bone you threw. It's a useful buff that has a real value, particularly for builds that more so use cloak to re-position in combat rather than escape from combat.
• Appreciate the lowering of the generic DPS magelight morph's detection radius.
• If radiant magelight is to be a hard counter that gives benefits even if just slotted, I think it's only fair that radiant should always be visible to potential stealth attacks. It is radiant afterall and it always reduces the effectiveness of stealth attacks
• 5 seconds is rather long for not be able to even use the cloak ability. It's a fast paced game with lots of burst damage.
• From what I understand in the next patch, if I am revealed via a potion, magelight, or a NB mark, everyone can see me and I can't cloak. If I am mistaken please correct me. Potion drinkers should see me, their teammates should not. This might be hard to code but that's how it should work. I guess the magelight thing makes sense to have everyone see since it's radiant and all, but 5 seconds is still too long. The NB mark is REALLY long and I always kind of pictured this marking for just the NB rather than the whole world. hat's how the original skill worked anyway. I know it now conveys debuffs for all, but I still think the actual "I can see you" aspect should be restricted to the NB who cast it and not her accompanying zerg. At least make that NB go through the necessities of doing something else to break the cloak/stealth and for others to attack me.
• In short, I agree with the general direction you are going to put in counters rather than just a cooldown or an artificial cost increase ala streak, but if I understand correctly, some of these counters are a bit too easy and a bit too long; completely graying out a player's skill is rather drastic and should not be easy or have a long duration.

What still needs work:

• Stamina morphs should not do magic damage. I see you plan on doing this for the next update. It's overdo.
• One of the soul harvests morph should do physical damage.
• I would prefer if Agony were redesigned to some sort of illusion - charm - mind effecting debuff.

Helluin

Pressure Points:
as I reported here, between Live Server and PTS I see exactly the same critical strike chances with the same skills in bar and the same gear.
Just a visual bug in the stats or is it not fixed?
I hope we will get an answer.

@Joy_Division : nice post, I and many others here think the same.

This one is a proposal I wrote in another topic about Magelight.
What do you think about it?

Helluin wrote: »

I think that the activation of this skill (both morphs), while in sneak, should reveal - remove also the caster from sneak as well.

This would prevent the use of Empower from sneak, that is something that could lead instead to more ganking from ranged especially.
Even if I would like to try that combo sometimes, I consider more balanced Magelight with this side effect.

...

The cost of the skill is still too low at the moment, it could be increased otherwise the target revealed should receive after the expiration of Magelight a sort of immunity like a crowd control effect.
In this way Magelight would be still a strong tool but invisibility/sneak wouldn't be completely negated if Magelight is chain spammed.

...

Briefly is a way to keep a strong Magelight but without removing entirely the Shadow Cloak mechanic.
If a NB is revealed, he/she has to face that and the invisibility lock, but then he/she can use this skill with a short immunity.
This would prevent a chain spam of Magelight and also safe a core and iconic class mechanic.
Otherwise a cost increase of Magelight or a reduction of the exposed status are other options.

EDIT:
P.s. another solution can be with Shadow Image: when teleporting to the shade, the revealed debuff is removed.

This would keep strong the reveal of Flare and Magelight but it would give NB a way to have a more strategic combat.

Miwerton

Im probably not the only wishing we could start modding trough ESO, you know fixing up the countless wrong percentages given, damages, mitigations and etc.
Might be the thing that gets my goat the most, i see countless errors that could be easily fixed (sure finding all of them might take time, but writing in the correct numbers is realivly easy). And theyre contiued prolonging of fixes, which they say they will fix in next update (boy those are getting old), with the reliability factor of a politican, if they can prolong, why f**k not.

Junkogen

In Cyrodiil, I have seen Sorcs and DKs tank half a raid group or more. I have yet to see a NB do this. So NBs run from combat? So what? What's wrong with hit and run? It's a playstyle which takes skill to master. The reason a magblades can and should be able to spam it is because they have light armor and no other class abilities to survive. They can go invisible. That's it. And there are already plenty of counters to it. There's no ability to lockout shields or shield stacking. How bout instead of magelight, you make a cloak breaker set? Make other classes have to dedicate their builds to cloak breaking as much as other classes have to dedicate to shield breaking.

Again, how is it okay that a class like NB which is so squishy, especially magblade, is getting crippled while other juggernaut classes are left as is?

Kalebron

Lifecode666 wrote: »

@Wrobel @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_BrianWheeler Please listen.


All magical players will have 100 points in elemental expert now. ults that do magic damage hits 25 percent harder and ofc all other magica based damage.

All magica players will now have 100 points in cp tree that reduce physical damage.

Proxi det and mage/inner light.x2 keena and alchemist. kaboom

Stamina users are left out.

No regen while moving in stealth????????
As a stamina Nightblade I use cloak as escape and as a defensive skill. This is everything we have.

Evasion and blur do not stack and they need tweaking
If cloak is going to stay this way look into Evasion and blur and it's morphs. they can be buffed or changed.
....Or increase cloak 2-3 seconds
Make killer's blade stamina based and make it do physical damage.
Infact since magical players will have 100 points in elemental expert now and ults that do magic damage hits 25 percent harder, stamina should have the same option.
A way to morph ults do physical damage so we can have 100 points in Mighty that do the same.

maybe there is something I missed but I wanna play stamina.

I can easy change my stam nightblade into a magica nightblade and be OP. Just check out deltia's video from PTS as a qucik example, but I don't want to run with a stick.

Make Blur like 60% evasion chance that lasts for 5 seconds, and cannot be recast for 10 seconds. That would be nice.

TheDefiantOne

Joy_Division wrote: »

I have a NB. It's Alliance rank 13 or something. But I wouldn't call myself a NB player or expert. I will leave my feedback. Take it for what Zos will.

What I like

• Always felt the Path of Darkness stuff was weak once soft caps were removed in 1.6. Appreciate the buff here.
• Appreciate the efforts to make Soul siphon a Healing ultimate. I play a stam who uses Soul Tether so I will leave it for others to comment on the effectiveness of your efforts.
• Debilitate. I hate one-target restriction spells in a game without cooldowns. TY. I still think Crippling grasp is better though as NBs are pretty good with resource managment.
• Catalyst. Appreciate little boosts here and there.

What is mixed:

• Funnel Health. I agree it was way too efficient. Legit reasoning. Not a fan of just flat out nerfs though without giving some other means of compensation.

Cloak Stuff: Where to start? I agree that instant-stealth on demand is too strong and seeing that sorcs streak, DK scales, and templar BoL got nerfed, an adjustment here was probably needed. I think you went overboard though.

• The suppression rather than removal of DoTs thing was fair. DoTs were weak, that's a templar thing, and the other classes got to heal/purge them so not a big issue here.
• I will acknowledge the minor protection bone you threw. It's a useful buff that has a real value, particularly for builds that more so use cloak to re-position in combat rather than escape from combat.
• Appreciate the lowering of the generic DPS magelight morph's detection radius.
• If radiant magelight is to be a hard counter that gives benefits even if just slotted, I think it's only fair that radiant should always be visible to potential stealth attacks. It is radiant afterall and it always reduces the effectiveness of stealth attacks
• 5 seconds is rather long for not be able to even use the cloak ability. It's a fast paced game with lots of burst damage.
• From what I understand in the next patch, if I am revealed via a potion, magelight, or a NB mark, everyone can see me and I can't cloak. If I am mistaken please correct me. Potion drinkers should see me, their teammates should not. This might be hard to code but that's how it should work. I guess the magelight thing makes sense to have everyone see since it's radiant and all, but 5 seconds is still too long. The NB mark is REALLY long and I always kind of pictured this marking for just the NB rather than the whole world. hat's how the original skill worked anyway. I know it now conveys debuffs for all, but I still think the actual "I can see you" aspect should be restricted to the NB who cast it and not her accompanying zerg. At least make that NB go through the necessities of doing something else to break the cloak/stealth and for others to attack me.
• In short, I agree with the general direction you are going to put in counters rather than just a cooldown or an artificial cost increase ala streak, but if I understand correctly, some of these counters are a bit too easy and a bit too long; completely graying out a player's skill is rather drastic and should not be easy or have a long duration.

What still needs work:

• Stamina morphs should not do magic damage. I see you plan on doing this for the next update. It's overdo.
• One of the soul harvests morph should do physical damage.
• I would prefer if Agony were redesigned to some sort of illusion - charm - mind effecting debuff.

I totally agree with Joy here. Bringing cloak to the level of other classes escape / repositioning skills is a good idea, however ZOS has a habbit of nerfing things to the ground when they don't know how to balance and that is bad. The removal of sneaky / stealthy gameplay and PVP style is really a terrible thing for any pvp game. If you want my opinion, vampire should be reworked in order to synergize with any stealthy / sneaky playstyle by giving buffs / counter to detection skills and mechanics. Any counter needs a counter.... this is the basic of any balanced changes.

Concerning the whole NB class adjustments, I would also add that a change to how the buff and proc from merciless resolve / grim focus needs to be done. I have created a thread on the ''character and classes mechanics'' section of the forums, which you can find here : http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/248075/nightblade-class-merciless-resolve-grim-focus-adjustment#latest

feel free to comment on it

Défiant

bowmanz607

If the change to cloak goes live, the being locked out of using part, then the minor maim duration needs to be increased to 10 seconds. If your going to wreck our defensive ability, then you need to compensate for that. 5 seconds is nothing if your infinitely locked out.

CtrlAltDlt

bowmanz607 wrote: »

If the change to cloak goes live, the being locked out of using part, then the minor maim duration needs to be increased to 10 seconds. If your going to wreck our defensive ability, then you need to compensate for that. 5 seconds is nothing if your infinitely locked out.

Or move it to another skil since probably 90% of the time cloak will be locked therefore it's a waste of a skill slot

bowmanz607

hmmm...
anyone know if purge removes the effect from mage light? please no guesses. if it does i will just slot efficient purge on all my builds.

TipsyDrow

This current crew of combat devs want the NB population curbed. There can be no other reason for the insane nerfs and counters to cloak. They wanted tanks gone a while back and they pretty much succeeded. Except for NB tanks which are now taken care of this patch. They wanted any templar who didn't want to play a stationary ranged glass cannon caster gone. Also accomplished with this patch. These changes to core class mechanics and all these nerfs were absolutely done on purpose and with intent. There is no other reason. These devs are professionals. They are not stupid nor inept at their jobs. They know exactly what they're doing and why. What they fail to realize is that people will just find a new game to play and it wont take long.

Skinzz

These new changes to cloak is a joke. Im a nb myself but i dont even run piercing mark because its easy to pull a nb out of stealth, caltrops, steel tornado and detect pots. These changes only caters to new pvp players, scrubs etc that struggle vs nbs.

AllPlayAndNoWork

Joy_Division wrote: »

I have a NB. It's Alliance rank 13 or something. But I wouldn't call myself a NB player or expert. I will leave my feedback. Take it for what Zos will.

What I like

• Always felt the Path of Darkness stuff was weak once soft caps were removed in 1.6. Appreciate the buff here.
• Appreciate the efforts to make Soul siphon a Healing ultimate. I play a stam who uses Soul Tether so I will leave it for others to comment on the effectiveness of your efforts.
• Debilitate. I hate one-target restriction spells in a game without cooldowns. TY. I still think Crippling grasp is better though as NBs are pretty good with resource managment.
• Catalyst. Appreciate little boosts here and there.

What is mixed:

• Funnel Health. I agree it was way too efficient. Legit reasoning. Not a fan of just flat out nerfs though without giving some other means of compensation.

Cloak Stuff: Where to start? I agree that instant-stealth on demand is too strong and seeing that sorcs streak, DK scales, and templar BoL got nerfed, an adjustment here was probably needed. I think you went overboard though.

• The suppression rather than removal of DoTs thing was fair. DoTs were weak, that's a templar thing, and the other classes got to heal/purge them so not a big issue here.
• I will acknowledge the minor protection bone you threw. It's a useful buff that has a real value, particularly for builds that more so use cloak to re-position in combat rather than escape from combat.
• Appreciate the lowering of the generic DPS magelight morph's detection radius.
• If radiant magelight is to be a hard counter that gives benefits even if just slotted, I think it's only fair that radiant should always be visible to potential stealth attacks. It is radiant afterall and it always reduces the effectiveness of stealth attacks
• 5 seconds is rather long for not be able to even use the cloak ability. It's a fast paced game with lots of burst damage.
• From what I understand in the next patch, if I am revealed via a potion, magelight, or a NB mark, everyone can see me and I can't cloak. If I am mistaken please correct me. Potion drinkers should see me, their teammates should not. This might be hard to code but that's how it should work. I guess the magelight thing makes sense to have everyone see since it's radiant and all, but 5 seconds is still too long. The NB mark is REALLY long and I always kind of pictured this marking for just the NB rather than the whole world. hat's how the original skill worked anyway. I know it now conveys debuffs for all, but I still think the actual "I can see you" aspect should be restricted to the NB who cast it and not her accompanying zerg. At least make that NB go through the necessities of doing something else to break the cloak/stealth and for others to attack me.
• In short, I agree with the general direction you are going to put in counters rather than just a cooldown or an artificial cost increase ala streak, but if I understand correctly, some of these counters are a bit too easy and a bit too long; completely graying out a player's skill is rather drastic and should not be easy or have a long duration.

What still needs work:

• Stamina morphs should not do magic damage. I see you plan on doing this for the next update. It's overdo.
• One of the soul harvests morph should do physical damage.
• I would prefer if Agony were redesigned to some sort of illusion - charm - mind effecting debuff.

This is about right a great balance.
But ZoS don't normally listen to common sense.

Great post but falling on deaf ears.

silky_soft

Everyone is running magelight on live in anticipation for the change haha. As if it wasnt hard enough already with caltrops, aoe and pots on 350ms.

Remove the ally buffs of radiant magelight. Return to a toggle and make it drain magika while toggled. I drain stamina in sneak, only logical and anti sneak drains magika.

Side note: Anyone else finding that any vamp they hit with it, camo hunter doesn't proc? Either initial stealth or chance.

Lava_Croft

RIP magicka melee, but I for one welcome all the sniper overlords.

[EDIT] Not entirely! See http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2710514/#Comment_2710514

AllPlayAndNoWork

Lava_Croft wrote: »

RIP magicka melee, but I for one welcome all the sniper overlords.

The nerf hammer wins again. Always the lowest common denominator, lazy arsed players.

Lava_Croft

AllPlayAndNoWork wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

RIP magicka melee, but I for one welcome all the sniper overlords.

The nerf hammer wins again. Always the lowest common denominator, lazy arsed players.

Magicka melee is obviously the OP style of Nightblade playing, hence the ridiculous nerfs.

[EDIT] Not entirely! See http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2710514/#Comment_2710514

Nonpoint

Lava_Croft wrote: »

RIP magicka melee, but I for one welcome all the sniper overlords.

First patch after Thieves Guild drops will cut bow range in half and remove player from sneak or invis with the use of any ability/buff/etc or charging of attack, etc. Also stamina cost for moving while in sneak has been increased 700%.

Junkogen

Lava_Croft wrote: »

AllPlayAndNoWork wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

RIP magicka melee, but I for one welcome all the sniper overlords.

The nerf hammer wins again. Always the lowest common denominator, lazy arsed players.

Magicka melee is obviously the OP style of Nightblade playing, hence the ridiculous nerfs.

Yeah, it's going to be a lot harder to melee as a magicka NB. Light armor without good shields and no cloak does not typically end well. Another playstyle bites the dust.

Helluin

In case you missed it:

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback on the new reveal ability interactions. We’ve been closely monitoring feedback in this thread (as well as the Nightblade Class thread) and have a number of changes planned for how revealing enemy players will work. These changes will not be in the next PTS patch, but will be changed before the Thieves Guild update goes live.

• Enemy players using Magelight and Revealing Flare will reveal you and prevent you from returning to stealth and invisibility for 3 seconds, down from 5 seconds.

We like the counterplay that Magelight and Revealing Flare have against stealth and invisibility, but agree the current lockout period is too punishing. Also note that the reveal lockout duration cannot be refreshed. The lockout should only occur if you are pulled out of stealth or invisibility – if you cast Magelight or Revealing Flare on a non-invisible target, it should have no effect.

• Piercing Mark will no longer prevent you from entering stealth or invisibility. It will match its behavior currently on the Live megaservers, and will only give the caster of the Piercing Mark unerring vision of you.

Unlike Magelight and Revealing Flare, you can constantly refresh Piercing Mark on an enemy. Being able to indefinitely prevent you from entering stealth or invisibility was too strong, especially since Piercing Mark has an extremely long range and duration.

We’d also like to clarify to say that the current interaction of Clouding Swarm and reveal abilities is intended. The global change to revealing noted above will make this less punishing for players who pick this morph, but we will be keeping a close eye on how it performs when compared to the Devouring Swarm morph.

This is night and day, from the description it seems something really balanced.

Maulkin

It's rather simple in my mind....

They identified 2 areas where they thought cloak was too strong considering its spammability (for manablades)

1. It purged all dots
2. The magic skills that were countering cloak had 0 usability beyond simply countering cloak. Thus they were never slotted.

These were a actually a good couple of things to target for improvement. And I must say they made a good couple of changes.

1. Cloak no longer purges dots, but stops them for the duration and grants Minor Protection. Which can even be seen as a buff in some cases.
2. They buffed magelight by no longer having it as a toggle, by giving some passive bonuses and also by revealing targets on activation. Thus they brought it more in line with benefits from Evil Hunter, kewl.

Now that's where they should have stopped with the nerfs and they should added some clever counter-play for the NB instead.

First thing they should have done is allow NBs to press the cloak button to receive the buffs from Shadow Barrier and the Minor Protection from Cloak. Being revealed for an amount of time is strong enough for a class without shields or burst heals, you should be able to get all buffs available to you while fully revealed.

Secondly, you know the orb of blue light that hovers above your head when you are revealed by Revealing Flare? Well there should be an opposite for those who use detect potions or Mark you. Because when you activate magelight, you have the glowing ball around you so people know who's doing the detecting, but not with pots or Mark. So imo they should add an orb above the head of the person who uses a pot (say orange) and an orb (say red) above the head of the person who does the marking.

The pot is an aoe effect, so the orange orb should be visible to everyone, like magelight, and stay there for the duration of the detection part of the potion. Also helps the pot user know when the effect has ended. Now, the red orb is only visible to the person who has been marked, since mark only affects that one person, not everyone around.

People with orange or red orbs can still go invis like you can with magelight active, or it would be too big of a debuff. But the moment they attack they are revealed and thus are susceptible to counter-Marking.

Now, using detect pots is rather "cheap" because you don't have to sacrifice skill slots or gear for it. Mark is more "expensive" since you spend a skill slot on it. Thus if the person who's doing the Marking is being revealed (via red orb above the head) to his marked victim, you need to buff Mark to compensate for the nerf. Otherwise no one will use it. It'd be a good idea to give, on top of the armor/spellres debuffs, both morphs of Mark a Minor Berserk buff against the target only. So that you if you Mark someone, yes he can see you too but a) everyone can see him b) he's debuffed c) you gain more damage against him. So if you die to your marked victim that's just too bad.

There. Balancing the Cloak nerfs out and creating some interesting counterplay instead of nerfing it to the ground.

Lava_Croft

@Helluin: That's good news! Thanks for sharing and thanks to ZOS for showing that they listen and adapt.

Helluin

Lava_Croft wrote: »

RIP magicka melee, but I for one welcome all the sniper overlords.

Empower tied to Magelight (that can be casted staying in sneak) imho can be still an issue, this time speaking about who uses it from sneak.

With some buffs up (Major Brutality, Minor Berserk, Major Force, Clever Alchemist's buff, Empower casting Magelight), a PTS template (so gear just purple), I managed to reach 60k crit with Lethal Arrow from sneak.

Ok, it was just an Echaetere in Wrothgar and I ignore how much armor they have.
Even calculating a 55-65% less damage, it would be really a lot in PvP.
It would be fun to see such a crit reflected by Dragon Fire Scale.

I wouldn't be surprised to see soon Magelight removing the caster from sneak or without triggering Empower.