Magicka Melee Spells Nightblade

TheBonesXXX

Wet Noodles, Wet Noodles everywhere.

Conceal Weapon - Speed Boost, cool. It's stun from stealth mechanic, awesome. But it's lack luster as a regular attack as it requires Crit Cloak + Lotus Fan (which hits like a wet noodle) + Conceal to pull off a dps combo is absolutely crap.

Lotus Fan - used to be really damn useful with its snare, now with everyone rockin' immovables, shuffles, heals, its dot damage is completely poop.

Cloak - It's not cloak that's garbage, its the fact that every class in the game has heeps of stealth counter play which do not allow the from stealth combos as a magicka-melee nightblade to connect, a lot of the abilities classes have these days completely negate the what a magicka-melee nightblade needs in order to use in their tool kit.

I'm not going to say nerf the counter play, I am going to ask that perhaps the passives which give stam-melee bonuses perhaps give magicka damage bonuses too - I don't expect to have stamina like melee dps, but I want to be able to make the range-melee melee-range transition a bit smoother so the playstyle works fluently.

What I am getting at is that the damage is wildly ineffective because it requires a from stealth attack in order to be proficient, considering that magicka-melee builds have to rely on the magicka damage coefficient in order to be successful, considering there is no magicka-melee weapon in the game currently.

So - passive updates that include magicka, with a tweak in conceal and lotus fan damage, should passives get a magicka-melee treatment I think Soul Harvest would still work marvelously.

Waffennacht

The speed boost isn't worth slotting concealed imo.

Other than that I agree

Gilvoth

i hope they listen to this and do as we are asking.

WacArnold

I miss melee

TheBonesXXX

I forgot to mention that the meleemagblade combo is cloak+lotus+conceal for the stun and double crit, however whenever a boundless storm, purify, fire turtle shell, or ground aoe is on the ground the crit and stun is gone because we are pulled out of stealth from the counter abilities.

its a real pain in the ass.

again I'm a not lookin to nerf other classes, I'm looking to make melee-mageblade a valid playstyle again for us who like to melee-mage.

arkansas_ESO

Two big things magic NB needs to make it competitive again: a way to purge snares/snare immunity that doesn't require you to go vampire, and to make Cloak less of a risk. Cloak's a very, very strong ability when it works, but it almost never will if you're fighting against somebody that has one of these slotted:

• Hurricane
• Volatile Armor
• Puncturing Sweeps/Biting Jabs
• Piercing Mark
• Detect potions
• Radiant Magelight

Making Cloak less of a gamble would help out significantly. Whether that's by reducing the amount of stuff that pulls you out of Cloak or giving Cloak a secondary defense buff (think Major Protection) that's applied to the caster if they're pulled out of Cloak is up to ZOS.

(Also make the Dark Cloak morph actually appealing again, 5 seconds' worth of Minor Protection is terrible.)

There's some other things that would need to be addressed: weaving destro/resto light attacks with Swallow Soul has been inconsistent since the animation changes in the Dark Brotherhood patch, Merciless' cast time makes it clunky, Impale has the second lowest execute threshold of any execute in the game, yet is also the only execute that can be reflected, absorbed (not a big issue now, but will be when Warden releases), dodged, and blocked, but a lot of these are either bug fixes or common sense QOL adjustments.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

TheBonesXXX wrote: »

Conceal Weapon - Speed Boost, cool. It's stun from stealth mechanic, awesome. But it's lack luster as a regular attack as it requires Crit Cloak + Lotus Fan (which hits like a wet noodle) + Conceal to pull off a dps combo is absolutely crap.

This right here is the specific reason I had to switch my melee MagBlade over to Stamina. Surprise Attack works as a spammable - Concealed Weapon simply doesn't.

The cost is slightly too high, and it simply doesn't hit hard enough. It REALLY needs Major Breach rolled into it, IMHO.

Rohamad_Ali

We've been pigeon holed into staff builds . Wrobel has not done a thing to address this or even made a comment to numerous threads .

Knootewoot

Waffennacht wrote: »

The speed boost isn't worth slotting concealed imo.

Other than that I agree

I do like my concealed weapon speed thank you.

Waffennacht

Knootewoot wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

The speed boost isn't worth slotting concealed imo.

Other than that I agree

I do like my concealed weapon speed thank you.

Nice, I'm learning to hate my build back to the drawing board

thankyourat

I actually been playing alot of dual wield/ resto lately with concealed​ as my main "spammable" I don't really spam it though I spend most of my time keeping my buffs up and keeping my opponents rooted and then I try to burst with my merciless soul tether combo. I'll spam concealed on low resistance or low cp targets. I don't think it's a wet noodle it's just as strong as surprise attack but it cost alot more and it doesn't have the major fracture so it doesn't hit as hard for how much it cost. On a dual wield magblade your light attacks are very weak as well. The days of magblades hitting players for 9k concealed weapons are gone for the most part (lol I still hit players for that amount sometimes)

I think if they gave concealed a buff that allows light attacks to scale of magicka and spell damage, and also returned magicka from heavy attacks. then added the purge back to cloak it would bring some life back into melee magblade

TheBonesXXX

I hope zos is listening, currently there is a metric ton of stealth counter play, and if players cannot find the stealth player then the stealth player needs credit at good at being sneaky and NOT the game being broken, really the arguments over the years of nightblades cloak and vanish cowardice are just garbage, credit needs to be where credit it do.

Nightblading is the art of misdirection and any nightblade worth their salt will misdirect their enemies in battle, the counter play was a crutch to suckers who got misdirected, currently our tool kit doesn't really support us misdirecting at all.. The Shadow ability isn't a misdirect, its a juke. Fear requires people to beat on a Magblade, in MeleeMageblades current state, if you having to press fear, you're already dead, again is not apart of the misdirection tool kit.

theres tons of "great" players on the forums with the red rivers of the "i got ganked" stuff.

I just want to see the MeleeMageblade style return back as a competitive playstyle.

MeleeMageblade as an elusive in and out, misdirecting playstyle is in the rocks..

---

Here is a few other things I thought of, Merciless Resolve turns light and heavy melee weapon attacks into irresistible damage, since Daedric damage does not work at all, it adds the much needed pressure in our tool kit in our weaves.. we just hit so poorly.

or

turns light and heavy melee attack into magicka damage and scales based off of our magicka.. I prefer the first, due to the fact that our stam pool is laudable at best.

"Merciless Resolve turns melee weapons into Spectral Scythes in making all Light and Heavy Physical attacks irresistible, in addition to the stuff it does now"

Argue what you want, but irresistible damage added a great mechanic to game, as long as it isn't a random RNG proc.

Speaking of which, ZOS.. Spectral Bow procs should refresh Merciless Resolve.. just saying.

---

I agree with the above.. Impale needs love too.

Sheuib

I'm happy to see that you aren't asking for nerfs. I do have to agree that the magblade that I made I could never find a play style with it that I liked and it is due to all the reasons you pointed out.

TheBonesXXX

Sheuib wrote: »

I'm happy to see that you aren't asking for nerfs. I do have to agree that the magblade that I made I could never find a play style with it that I liked and it is due to all the reasons you pointed out.

You don't tune down a car to make it run better 99% of the time, you tune up a car to make it run better 99% of the time.

It is not rocket science to get all of the play styles at a competition level, it really isn't. Just like it is not rocket science to fine

Truthfully, I rather see MageBlade get speed and animation treatments with slight damage adjustments, my issues and gripes with the MageBlade aren't really in the coefficents themselves as much as the mechanics of the MeleeBlade style are in an incredibly poor shape.

Yes, MageBlade hits like a bloody wet noodle, everything revolves around waiting for spectral arrow and the fact that MageBlade has very heavy requirements on certain skills to work more so than any other class in the game.

The range, efficiency, animations, and mechanics of a lot of our abilities are just poop. in the MeleeMageblade style.

i'm not gonna sit there and be a pure range Nightblade, I *** hate pure styles, HATE them. I'm old school, we range until melee, melee until range I come from an era where PVPers had their perception and fingers do 90% of the playing.

That where I want to push MageBlade, its a psychological class but the mechanics like the ability to manipulate the battlefield.

It turned into a nuke, which is garbage, just big passive huge numbers is a crummy playstyle for a class with such a potential to be an elegant, swift, graceful - the class that dissects its opponents with a surgical precision is melee Mageblade and it has been neglected.

I don't mind the weaknesses of being a Nightblade, being a squishy turd if we aren't constantly moving, that's fine, that plays to my strengths as a player anyway.

Let Templar, Dragonknight, and Sorcerer be stiff, boring, and easy classes. I dont give a *** about them, I just don't want to nerf them into the ground.

Bazeric

Glad to see someone is still fighting the good fight. I gave up, went ranged for awhile, now I am playing around with tank modes. Got sick of having 20K tooltips crit while empowered for 8K despite having 14k spell pen. The Destro weave was far more effective at keeping pressure and dealing damage while removing the risk of being up close and personal with the enemy. There was no reward for playing is the highest risk form of play, a LA wearing Melee Magicka Damage build. It was tiresome only being able to vaporizes n00bs but fail to be able to pressure any half competent player/build.

Tried to point out that conceal is lame before but I'll remind people,
Conceal barely hits for more than Swallow Soul (which can weave far more effectively than conceal) and only has the added speed. The speed is nice, but there is nothing impressive about the damage and cost especially compared to Swallow Soul/Funnel Health. And the speed really is only good for PVP, in PVE it is fun to pester overland mobs, but in dungeons and beyond you aren't ever in stealth so it does nothing but be an expensive mediocre damage skills.

Lotus Fail... I mean "Fan," I don't know, whenever I am on melee, it rarely connects unless I am 5 ft away, but I'll get crit rushed out of stealth from halfway across Cyrodiil. Its damage is mild, but the dot is a joke. Again works better with a destro weave.... Oh, and is there a snare on this still? I can't tell anymore. Miss the snare AOE.

Waffennacht

Is it me, but can Reapers (ult, incap morph) miss after activation without the opponent dodge rolling?

Seemed like I would get in range, hit it, and as they move, my ult is gone and no damage is done. Learned you can F up Merciless with AC doh.

Im off to another toon till I can convince myself to try again

thankyourat

Waffennacht wrote: »

Is it me, but can Reapers (ult, incap morph) miss after activation without the opponent dodge rolling?

Seemed like I would get in range, hit it, and as they move, my ult is gone and no damage is done. Learned you can F up Merciless with AC doh.

Im off to another toon till I can convince myself to try again

I don't know alot of the times I'll use soul harvest and it won't do anything, but I still lose ultimate. I assumed it was just lag. I usually stick with soul tether instead because it's good AOE damage, and has a stun or shooting star because it's delayed damage that can be timed to hit at the same time as assassins will.

Waffennacht

thankyourat wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Is it me, but can Reapers (ult, incap morph) miss after activation without the opponent dodge rolling?

Seemed like I would get in range, hit it, and as they move, my ult is gone and no damage is done. Learned you can F up Merciless with AC doh.

Im off to another toon till I can convince myself to try again

I don't know alot of the times I'll use soul harvest and it won't do anything, but I still lose ultimate. I assumed it was just lag. I usually stick with soul tether instead because it's good AOE damage, and has a stun or shooting star because it's delayed damage that can be timed to hit at the same time as assassins will.

Yeah I went through some clips, activated, ult gone, no damage, no miss, just gone...

QuebraRegra

thankyourat wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Is it me, but can Reapers (ult, incap morph) miss after activation without the opponent dodge rolling?

Seemed like I would get in range, hit it, and as they move, my ult is gone and no damage is done. Learned you can F up Merciless with AC doh.

Im off to another toon till I can convince myself to try again

I don't know alot of the times I'll use soul harvest and it won't do anything, but I still lose ultimate. I assumed it was just lag. I usually stick with soul tether instead because it's good AOE damage, and has a stun or shooting star because it's delayed damage that can be timed to hit at the same time as assassins will.

THIS and THIS! ^

What's going on here with ST? Must be lag? I had times that I couldn't even activate, and other times when it goes off, does nothing, but my ULT is gone. This needs to be looked at.

t3hdubzy

My magblade is useless for anything but bombing, which only works against groups without a better than medicore healer.

The staff bar is decent, i can 1v1 okay, but having no heals without a resto bar is what usually does me in.

Detect pots
Volatile armor
Grothdar
Shards
Caltrops
Inner light
Radiant mage light
Any aoe really
Plus a million other skills counter cloak.
Piercing mark


Nightblade has some really good passives for tanking, but i prefer dps, and class skills for dps on a magblade are terrible compared to mages guild, destro staff.

Crippling grasp is the only skill worth a crap because of the immovable spam that doesnt give immunity to cc.


I would love love love some melee skills. Concealed weapon is terrible, impale is terrible, cloak is subpar, siphoning strikes only makes up for lackluster regen because you have to build for max spell power max magika. Piercing mark is a waste of a slot to account for other nightblades. Agony is subpar but a waste of a slot for a destro staff skill.

TheBonesXXX

Waffennacht wrote: »

thankyourat wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Is it me, but can Reapers (ult, incap morph) miss after activation without the opponent dodge rolling?

Seemed like I would get in range, hit it, and as they move, my ult is gone and no damage is done. Learned you can F up Merciless with AC doh.

Im off to another toon till I can convince myself to try again

I don't know alot of the times I'll use soul harvest and it won't do anything, but I still lose ultimate. I assumed it was just lag. I usually stick with soul tether instead because it's good AOE damage, and has a stun or shooting star because it's delayed damage that can be timed to hit at the same time as assassins will.

Yeah I went through some clips, activated, ult gone, no damage, no miss, just gone...

Its because if you start the animation and a player moves out of it the animation misses.

TheBonesXXX

Bazeric wrote: »

Glad to see someone is still fighting the good fight. I gave up, went ranged for awhile, now I am playing around with tank modes. Got sick of having 20K tooltips crit while empowered for 8K despite having 14k spell pen. The Destro weave was far more effective at keeping pressure and dealing damage while removing the risk of being up close and personal with the enemy. There was no reward for playing is the highest risk form of play, a LA wearing Melee Magicka Damage build. It was tiresome only being able to vaporizes n00bs but fail to be able to pressure any half competent player/build.

Tried to point out that conceal is lame before but I'll remind people,
Conceal barely hits for more than Swallow Soul (which can weave far more effectively than conceal) and only has the added speed. The speed is nice, but there is nothing impressive about the damage and cost especially compared to Swallow Soul/Funnel Health. And the speed really is only good for PVP, in PVE it is fun to pester overland mobs, but in dungeons and beyond you aren't ever in stealth so it does nothing but be an expensive mediocre damage skills.

Lotus Fail... I mean "Fan," I don't know, whenever I am on melee, it rarely connects unless I am 5 ft away, but I'll get crit rushed out of stealth from halfway across Cyrodiil. Its damage is mild, but the dot is a joke. Again works better with a destro weave.... Oh, and is there a snare on this still? I can't tell anymore. Miss the snare AOE.

Its because they never kept up with skills for the magmeleeblade style while other classes been spoiled out the behind.

I'm fine with magblade requiring players to actually think and not being braindead like the other classes have become. As long as the tool kits become relevant and competitive.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Please pass this to the Team.

I do not want mageblade to be easy mode, but I do want it to actually be competitive, require intelligence, and not be a brute force brainless class like the others, but I do want it to be competitive.

arkansas_ESO

@ZOS_RichLambert @Wrobel

TheBonesXXX

I think Impale should actually Impale someone, Vlad Dracul style - burst ticks, like Radiant. Just not as many, from the 30%-execute range, since it is dodged, reflected, shut down.

Concealed Weapon should get a two in one treatment, its not a Concealed Weapon if the Nightblade is out of stealth, so call it Seething Weapon and give it another effect, like.. Make it a Spectral Sword.. Let it drink the blood of our enemies.

Merciless again, just let it refresh upon spectral bow use, it adds fluidity to a mechanics that require weaving.

Again, presses the issue of the meleeMagblade,

If we use melee weapons, we do physical damage. Which is fine, we need it for light and heavy resource weaving; Conceals Weak damage plus weak physical makes melee magblade irrelevant.

Again, giving Conceal Weapon a two prong treatment, we can keep the stun in stealth mechanic and get a mechanic that lets use compete with other styles.

Or let Merciless Resolve also make our physical light and heavy ignore more resist than other classes.

Perhaps let Conceal Turn ignore a percentage of resistances.

Many possibilities

LegacyDM

Devs don't listen. All wrobel does is nerf magicka melee by continuous nerfs to magicka sustain and increase skill costs. The best buff we got was an increase in impale range. Whoopiedifndo. Magicka skills hit like a wet noodle and to make things worse I can't slot damage jewelry anymore because of the sustain nerfs.

Furthermore he indirectly nerfed magicka melee nb when he buffed staves. Sure, crushIng shock gets a buff and strife gets nerfed. Go figure. I'd love to see the stats on how many people are actually playing magicka melee nb compared to all other classes and play styles.

Finally because there are now over a dozen ways to counter cloak this class play style is dead in pvp. So we get crappy sustain. Crappy damage. Crappy cloak.

I'd like to see nb dots do more damage in pvp. Burst is king and dots do jack. I can hit a magicka sorc full blast with agony, lotus, cripple, and skoria and it tickles them. Templars just purge and heal. Dks armor buffs negates. Dots really need love in this game. Why is all about the burst? Which magicka nb doesn't have.

There is a reason why this class play style is ranked the worst in trials pve, and arguably the worst in game. Magicka melee nb not in a good spot. Thanks wrobelnerf.

TheBonesXXX

LegacyDM wrote: »

Devs don't listen. All wrobel does is nerf magicka melee by continuous nerfs to magicka sustain and increase skill costs. The best buff we got was an increase in impale range. Whoopiedifndo. Magicka skills hit like a wet noodle and to make things worse I can't slot damage jewelry anymore because of the sustain nerfs.

Furthermore he indirectly nerfed magicka melee nb when he buffed staves. Sure, crushIng shock gets a buff and strife gets nerfed. Go figure. I'd love to see the stats on how many people are actually playing magicka melee nb compared to all other classes and play styles.

Finally because there are now over a dozen ways to counter cloak this class play style is dead in pvp. So we get crappy sustain. Crappy damage. Crappy cloak.

I'd like to see nb dots do more damage in pvp. Burst is king and dots do jack. I can hit a magicka sorc full blast with agony, lotus, cripple, and skoria and it tickles them. Templars just purge and heal. Dks armor buffs negates. Dots really need love in this game. Why is all about the burst? Which magicka nb doesn't have.

There is a reason why this class play style is ranked the worst in trials pve, and arguably the worst in game. Magicka melee nb not in a good spot. Thanks wrobelnerf.

He definitely did not do magicka melee a favor with buffing staves. I'm not gonna use dual staves, I like dw or SB and a destro staff.

Its the hardest set up in the game to play, because its so weak as it is.

I offered up an idea for Conceal, a two prong treatment. All the Thirsty Blade needs to do is three big ticks of damage, once you land the thing the ticks go off.

Then lower the cost. Done deal is done.

Bazeric

LegacyDM wrote: »

Why is all about the burst? Which magicka nb doesn't have.

No exactly, the "potential" burst is huge, the reality of getting merciless to proc and then to be able to time it through lag and not be dodged/blocked paired with [insert ult of choice here] is slim. Heck, I even tried to build around soul harvest ganking, but since nothing weaves well on melee it never worked. My 20K+ tooltip rarely hit above 8K on empowered crit with 14K spell pen. Then trying to follow up with conceal I would just be met with "Dodged" spammed across my screen. Heck, the skill I got the most Killing Blows with was Sap because it goes through dodge roll. Impale doesn't scale in PVP. Unless everyone you fight has 50K health, the threshold for the damage scale hardly outperforms a swallow soul, without the weave... and the dodges, oh the dodges.... between shuffle and dodge rolls (and reflects), 1 in 10 impales might hit. (Just for fun, one night, I followed a zerg and only spammed impale because one person on the forum thought the range buff was going to make it the new jeezus beam... well I knew it wouldn't but to be fair I tried it and... well I don't see zergs of NBs on the back line spamming impale.)

Waffennacht

Bazeric wrote: »

LegacyDM wrote: »

Why is all about the burst? Which magicka nb doesn't have.

No exactly, the "potential" burst is huge, the reality of getting merciless to proc and then to be able to time it through lag and not be dodged/blocked paired with [insert ult of choice here] is slim. Heck, I even tried to build around soul harvest ganking, but since nothing weaves well on melee it never worked. My 20K+ tooltip rarely hit above 8K on empowered crit with 14K spell pen. Then trying to follow up with conceal I would just be met with "Dodged" spammed across my screen. Heck, the skill I got the most Killing Blows with was Sap because it goes through dodge roll. Impale doesn't scale in PVP. Unless everyone you fight has 50K health, the threshold for the damage scale hardly outperforms a swallow soul, without the weave... and the dodges, oh the dodges.... between shuffle and dodge rolls (and reflects), 1 in 10 impales might hit. (Just for fun, one night, I followed a zerg and only spammed impale because one person on the forum thought the range buff was going to make it the new jeezus beam... well I knew it wouldn't but to be fair I tried it and... well I don't see zergs of NBs on the back line spamming impale.)

Nailed it on the head, theoretically the burst is there. I dropped my NB the moment my match was over and

1. Dodge roll cancelled my own Merciless at least 4 times
2. Ultimate firing and then opponent literally walkin to avoid it
3. Weaving is nearly impossible with heavy attack staff bug and swallow soul/weird animations
4. The most difficult to use and land execute

These really aren't problems that should even exist in the first place

TheBonesXXX

Waffennacht wrote: »

Bazeric wrote: »

LegacyDM wrote: »

Why is all about the burst? Which magicka nb doesn't have.

No exactly, the "potential" burst is huge, the reality of getting merciless to proc and then to be able to time it through lag and not be dodged/blocked paired with [insert ult of choice here] is slim. Heck, I even tried to build around soul harvest ganking, but since nothing weaves well on melee it never worked. My 20K+ tooltip rarely hit above 8K on empowered crit with 14K spell pen. Then trying to follow up with conceal I would just be met with "Dodged" spammed across my screen. Heck, the skill I got the most Killing Blows with was Sap because it goes through dodge roll. Impale doesn't scale in PVP. Unless everyone you fight has 50K health, the threshold for the damage scale hardly outperforms a swallow soul, without the weave... and the dodges, oh the dodges.... between shuffle and dodge rolls (and reflects), 1 in 10 impales might hit. (Just for fun, one night, I followed a zerg and only spammed impale because one person on the forum thought the range buff was going to make it the new jeezus beam... well I knew it wouldn't but to be fair I tried it and... well I don't see zergs of NBs on the back line spamming impale.)

Nailed it on the head, theoretically the burst is there. I dropped my NB the moment my match was over and

1. Dodge roll cancelled my own Merciless at least 4 times
2. Ultimate firing and then opponent literally walkin to avoid it
3. Weaving is nearly impossible with heavy attack staff bug and swallow soul/weird animations
4. The most difficult to use and land execute

These really aren't problems that should even exist in the first place

I've had my soul harvest miss ample amount of times, even when I've Cloaked + Lotus Fan + Conceal > Soul Harvest > Impale.

You'd think it'd be pretty basic to pull off, but noooooooooooooo. Never.

Honestly, I'd like to see Merciless be smoother and our toolkit open up to deliver some constant pressure, all they need to do is make Conceal Weapon something else when not in stealth, let it land and have three big ticks of damage come afterwards.

Impales execute threshold is like 5%.. lol.

WacArnold

What else is bs is there are a lot of reflect projectiles in this game, just got done dueling a templar the only thing I could hit her with was my basic restro staff attack. My point is they put all theses reflect skills, then zos forcees magblade to be ranged so some characters can completely shut down a magblade. I hate how magblade is right now, it's one dimensional and even the strongest version is weak compared to other classes, probably why you see so few. Just hope someday we see magblade get its day melee and ranged.

Metemsycosis

I think concealed weapon spam is a waste but if used when fully buffed against stunned opponents the damage is pretty high. I like combining with at least two dots, rely on funnel health for spammable dps/hps,and switch to concealed weapon only when meteors are falling from the sky. Block cast the impale at the finish.