[Class Rep] Nightblade Feedback Thread

justinbarrett

1) seems everything breaks my cloak.

2) there should probably be a passive in assasination that reduces the movement speed penalty(or lessens it) for sneaking..the trade off should be lowered resistances....or something...but I already feel too squishy. I often end a battleground with 9-12 kills and 11-14 deaths..ofc I could just be horrible but anytime I see a scorc that lightning one shots me every time...that's a whole other can of worms though.

Alchimiste1

anyone else that would like to see minor expedition on cripple ?

WraithShadow13

I haven't seen anybody mention this but Vampirism. Rolling a vampire stamblade has been a bit of a pain, as i can move faster while stealthed but as others have said, cloak is kind of useless at this point. Given the usage of aoe and the abilities magic classes have, NB's seem to be at the short end of the stick here. Sustain isn't a huge issue but it seems like i really have to focus hard and fine-tune into things like the health stealing or the sneaking before they really seem to do much good. I'm better off going through magic abilities and other skill trees, when the siphoning tree just seems... meh, at this point. When rolling as a vampire, this seems all the more blatant. If i'm not specializing into a specific aspect OF nightblade, this class just seems way underpowered compared to the newer classes or the heavy magic users.



As a side note, given the VISUAL aspects of the newer characters, it would be nice to get a little improvement in terms of visual presentation, as well. Maybe add more acrobatic movements, faster attack speeds, SOMETHING to make them feel like that stamina fighting style isn't gimping them more than helping.

master_vanargand

Won't even a small wish come true?
We just want to fix the unreasonable flaws in Nightblade.

SOLDIER_1stClass

The lack of defensibility is not made up by cloak.

In any pvp setting you have constant aoe abilities/ procs and aoes the move with caster.

As such cloak needs a buff.

Concealed weapons movement speed needs to be a Nightblade passive. In return either add additional resource return or health return to it as a replacement.

Major brutality needs to be moved to Leeching Strikes morphs.

Grim focus proc needs decreased travel time and be reduced to three light attacks


Teleport strike morphs. Remove aoe and empower

For lotus fan add a minor damage shield that scales off of max health

For Ambush add a heal that heals for 40 percent of the damage done after minor vulnerability ends.

Rudrani

1) All the DPS is based on using the merciless proc efficiently, but the visual and audio cues about where merciless is at are so minute (turn on long effect and stare at a tiny box in the left of the bottom of the screen). Make something that feels more real and is much easier to notice and track.

2) It's supposed to be a stealthy class but there is not much that is stealthy about how it is best played (speaking as a PvE player). For that I guess sneaking and dark cloak are not integrated into the class correctly.

master_vanargand

Nobody uses Power Extraction in PvP and PvE.
Dual Wield's Whirling Blades can defeat enemies faster in Solo PvE.
I need add Minor Courage(yourself and 11 group members) to Power Extraction.
When that change is made, Power Extraction becomes a unique and wonderful skill.

Jimbru

Speaking from a PVE perspective...

Melee stamblade can use 2H + Brawler for barrier, or 1H dual + Flurry spam, combined with Briarheart and Leeching Strikes, to achieve of a decent level of durability. The former has barrier, the other has ridiculous self-healing.

Magblade can use Iceheart set and the skill from light armor for barrier, plus has a variety of self-healing skills like Swallow Soul and Sap Essence. BUT, magblades wear light armor, so they are missing the various thiefy bonuses that stamblades in medium armor take for granted.

Bow stamblade finds itself stuck on the outside as far as durability and DPS are concerned. They have no viable options for barrier, and their healing options are more limited, especially compared to magblades.

Jimbru

master_vanargand wrote: »

Nobody uses Power Extraction in PvP and PvE.

Actually, I use Power Extraction on my stamblade as an AOE opener for the buff + debuff effect. Agreed that it could be stronger, but it's not useless.

Hotdog_23

Jimbru wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Nobody uses Power Extraction in PvP and PvE.

Actually, I use Power Extraction on my stamblade as an AOE opener for the buff + debuff effect. Agreed that it could be stronger, but it's not useless.

Use power extraction as well. Don't want every build to be a cookie cutter version of next one. Try to use several class skills in every build to keep each unique and different. Think it's more fun and meta is only really needed for score pushing runs.

Stay safe and have fun

Nick_Balza

All what is needed - just stop nerfing it. And cancel 10% of applied nerfs and nb will become playable.
ZoS, go nerf someone else. Wardens, sorcs, for instance. Werewolfs are good candidates too!

wheresbes

Having played Magblade for some time now, I wanted to share some considerations:

I agree with Rudrani that Merciless should give better cues; more often than not I have to resort searching through the icons to see if it's there which breaks immersion. I would actually find it more convenient if it was a toggle or auto-refreshes itself.

Which brings us to the next issue: why our class has to have the most convolute rotation? buff this, land that, wait for it to happen. I tried to simplify things to the best of my abilities, but I still feel that half of a fight I have to keep track of stuff. And it doesn't need to be like this, really.

This also relates to the shade: it's technically a pet, why can't it be a semi-permanent pet like the sorcerer's ones? You cast it and until it's not killed it stays there.

Then, our is supposedly the assassin's class. Maybe that's true for stamblades, but as a magblade, I don't feel an assassin the slightest. Though this is a broader issue, not only class-related. I could assassinate with a dagger, a sword, but with the staff? Unless its edge it's sharp or I can hit people with it, being melee with staff is awkward to say the least.

Yet magblades still need to go melee IMO. I'm all for using class abilities, so I have Death Stroke that has a 7m range (the other ultimates are melee as well). I could teleport to enemies if I wanted, Merciless heals me if I'm melee, Concealed Weapon is great for mobility but, guess what? to actually use it you need to be close to your target. I pesonally use and like Sap Essence, but if I needed it for major sorcery, again, I would need to be close to the enemy.

TL;DR: Having a semi-permanent shade and merciless toggle/refresh would help greatly to simplify rotation. We should acknowledge the fact that many class abilities are melee, so magicka and melee combat should be better synergised.

divnyi

1: Your own dots break your clock. This limits sneaky PvP gameplays to burst kills (snipe or melee stam gank or bomb). Once you put even a single dot, you cannot escape. I'm even fine with my dots doing no damage while I'm sneaking, just don't interrupt.

2: Class lacks viable HP-based heals. Dark Cloak morph removes the strongest ability NB has (cloak), while being worse than other classes %HP heals. This locks NBs exclusively into squishy gankers gameplay.

brandonv516

Shadowy Disguise (a.k.a. Cloak):

AoEs break it
Potions break it
Detection skills break it
Traps break it
Your DoTs break it
Jumping off some ledges breaks it
Enemy pets break it
Some enemy DoTs break it (mostly from procs)
Light attacks have known to break it

Some of these are likely unintended but we won't know until you address them officially.

exeeter702

Jimbru wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Nobody uses Power Extraction in PvP and PvE.

Actually, I use Power Extraction on my stamblade as an AOE opener for the buff + debuff effect. Agreed that it could be stronger, but it's not useless.

When people refer to "pvp and pve" they are generally talking about those environments were pefformance matters ie not overland questing and soloing delves. Power extraction is a dead skill for anything outside of casual questing/farming. And even then, stamina builds have far more useful aoe skills for that. Power extraction was zos attempting to give NB tanks a group utility and not really succeeding.

Jimbru wrote: »

Speaking from a PVE perspective...

Melee stamblade can use 2H + Brawler for barrier, or 1H dual + Flurry spam, combined with Briarheart and Leeching Strikes, to achieve of a decent level of durability. The former has barrier, the other has ridiculous self-healing.

Magblade can use Iceheart set and the skill from light armor for barrier, plus has a variety of self-healing skills like Swallow Soul and Sap Essence. BUT, magblades wear light armor, so they are missing the various thiefy bonuses that stamblades in medium armor take for granted.

Bow stamblade finds itself stuck on the outside as far as durability and DPS are concerned. They have no viable options for barrier, and their healing options are more limited, especially compared to magblades.

I do not feel this is constructive feedback for the key issues that face the class.

[Edit to remove bait]

exeeter702

wheresbes wrote: »

TL;DR: Having a semi-permanent shade and merciless toggle/refresh would help greatly to simplify rotation. We should acknowledge the fact that many class abilities are melee, so magicka and melee combat should be better synergised.

You dont want shade to be semi permanent. It's already a fire and forgot for x seconds type of skill, for pve this is a non factor entirely, even though I don't believe image is even used by dps magblades but I digress.

If image was permanent, you would completely neuter it's intended utility of mobility via not being able to relocate your teleport point after each use.

Both morphs arent worth the slot for dps focused builds in pve, and dark shade is an aoe minor maim tool for tanks.

Magblades issues aren't in its pve mechanical execution department.

Tommy_The_Gun

1. Shadow Cloak (aside from being very unreliable, as a lot of things - even things that are not supposed to - break it due to various bugs) - this skill & its morphs are very inconsistent.

Shadowy Disguise gives you additional effect on top of invisibility (that base morph provide), but the other morph - Dark Cloak - drops invisibility totally. I think it would make a lot of sense if both of those morph offered invisibility as a base and one additional effect depending on the morph. Shadowy Disguise gives an offensive buff, so Dark Cloak should offer a defensive buff (maybe a heal over time for example).

2. Aspect of Terror (NB fear skill). This skill feels extremely underwhelming. Almost as if it is missing auxiliary effect, as all you get with morphs is... larger target cap... yeah... As far as I can tell this is the only AOE ability left in the game that still has a target cap. All AOEs had their target cap removed long time ago. Even Fighters guild fear skill (Turn Evil) does not have a target cap. It is an instant AOE fear with strong effects on top (2 Minor buffs for you and your allies).

Comparing those 2 skills (Turn Evil & Aspect of Terror with 2 morphs), Aspect of Terror feels bare, as if it was missing additional effect that every skill gets with choosing a morph option.

Edit: I do realize that Dark Cloak is used as class self-heal ability, but it comes with a great cost of not being able to use NB's iconic invisibility. There are a lot of skills in NB toolk kit that imho would fit better as a class heal - such as one of Malevolent Offering morph. One could be self heal, while the other an ally healing ability. It would be way more consistent.

Vermintide

your own DOTs break cloak

Wait, wait. This one is new. Is that intentional or a bug?

I have seen some spectacularly dumb things done with this class in my time. I have been on and off this game long enough to witness the Nightblade (magblade especially) fall from the very top of the pile. But that right there... That is a whole new world of stupidity.

What's amazing is how by this point, we're getting people (presumably newer to the game) independently suggesting fixes to skills that are actually exactly how those skills used to work.

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

2. Aspect of Terror (NB fear skill). This skill feels extremely underwhelming. Almost as if it is missing auxiliary effect

It is. It used to apply maim, and was essential for survivability. Totally senseless nerf that wasn't needed on an already squishy class. It also used to hit like 8 targets or something.

exeeter702 wrote: »

I don't believe image is even used by dps magblades but I digress.

I use it when I'm out soloing, and I might be behind the times here but for a while it was used in group builds as another DOT to proc Skoria.

exeeter702

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

1. Shadow Cloak (aside from being very unreliable, as a lot of things - even things that are not supposed to - break it due to various bugs) - this skill & its morphs are very inconsistent.

Shadowy Disguise gives you additional effect on top of invisibility (that base morph provide), but the other morph - Dark Cloak - drops invisibility totally. I think it would make a lot of sense if both of those morph offered invisibility as a base and one additional effect depending on the morph. Shadowy Disguise gives an offensive buff, so Dark Cloak should offer a defensive buff (maybe a heal over time for example).

I feel too many people directly associate nb with being exclusively tied to stealth. This is absolutely not the case. Nb are the class that have access to a stealth based playstyle undoubtably. But there is nothing wrong with dark cloak in terms of its intentional application, and there absolutely needs to be a route for nb builds that opt out of a stealth based build. And there are just as many passives in the nb skill lines that do not really work well with stealth in mind as there are passives that do benefit from stealth.

Dark cloak simply needs to be a bit more generous in its % healing on lower max health builds. Cloakless magblades have existed since the begining of eso, and it is a playstyle route that the developers encourage for the class based on various mechanics that promote staying in combat and keeping up on GCD uses (siphoning attacks, swallow soul, nearly every siphoning shadow passive).

Dark cloak absolutely does not need a stealth effect. Many years ago, dot suppression was given baseline to both cloaks and dark was given its minor protection effect when stealth ended. It was made this way as a psuedo non stealth defensive buff for NBs. The idea was you would actively cast dark cloak and disregard the stealth effect to maintain minor protection, ie hitting dark cloak mid fight thus breaking stealth immediately to help in brawler focused build types and pve nb tanks, the later of which was always something zos considered despite player opinion of which class had any real business of tanking. The issue with the later was that nb tanks would use dark cloak but also lose aggro. A minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but eventually zos decided, rightfully so that the stealth component of dark cloak was completely unecessary and that giving it a healing effect would technically solve the other issue of nb tanks getting something back from having lost there "sap tank" functionality in pve while also letting the dark cloak heal synergize with non stealth magblades that relied on a constant stream of self hots in pvp as a method of survivability.

brandonv516

Vermintide wrote: »

your own DOTs break cloak

Wait, wait. This one is new. Is that intentional or a bug?

Yes our own DoTs.

Soul Tether is a big one. I'll cast it and remain in the tether but I'll watch myself keep coming out of Cloak with nothing else I can see pulling me out.

russelmmendoza

I got a ban for saying how I felt to the devs when they nerf nightblade next to useless.
They want me to provide constructive criticism to what they did to the nightblade class.
We kept posting that the nerf would greatly hinder the playstyle for nightblade clasd. Did the devs listen, no. Why ask for constructive criticism if your not gonna listen.
If I express how I feel to the devs, my next ban is permanent.
Hmmnn.

brandonv516

Haven't even been back for a whole month and it's pretty disappointing. The changes from the PTS don't look any more appealing as I play in no-CP anyways.

Glad it didn't cost me anything to try it again but you've ruined Magicka Nightblade in PvP - sent the class down a path I'm not sure you know how to fix. I'm sure it's very competitive in PvE but not my style.

I'll try again in a few months and keep an eye on things until then.

wheresbes

exeeter702 wrote: »

wheresbes wrote: »

TL;DR: Having a semi-permanent shade and merciless toggle/refresh would help greatly to simplify rotation. We should acknowledge the fact that many class abilities are melee, so magicka and melee combat should be better synergised.

You dont want shade to be semi permanent. It's already a fire and forgot for x seconds type of skill, for pve this is a non factor entirely, even though I don't believe image is even used by dps magblades but I digress.

If image was permanent, you would completely neuter it's intended utility of mobility via not being able to relocate your teleport point after each use.

Both morphs arent worth the slot for dps focused builds in pve, and dark shade is an aoe minor maim tool for tanks.

Magblades issues aren't in its pve mechanical execution department.

Hi exeeter702, I perfectly understand your point and by reading the majority of posts by people in this forum, I see why it's valid. Still, I feel it reflects one aspect of the game, that of pushing for the best DPS.

There are other ways of playing that ought to be taken into consideration, namely, the ways that average people (like myself) play and those that would like to focus on class skills.

I usually play solo and to the bare minimum, I precast merciless, lay down path, cast shade (those are my 2 DOTs), then the expected LAs/Shallow Soul/ultimate/Merciless proc and with an 18sec duration of Shade and 10sec of path, I feel I have to swap to backbar more often that I want to. Things get even wonkier when I'm interrupted or, for any other reason, Merciless is not cast. I don't even use Siphoning as that would be something more to track.

(Regarding the semi-permanent shade, I was indeed referring to the Dark Shade morph, the other one needs to be able to relocate).

These are just my 2cents, of course, I don't expect everyone to agree!

rbfrgsp

NBs in PvE are in a good place. Yeah, they don't offer much in the way of unique functionality but they can hold their own in damage output. In PvP there are still issues with the way NBs are being asked to play (in terms of skills and availability of buffs/debuffs/heals/purges). Main pain points are therefore:

1) NBs need to be faster.
2) NBs need to do higher burst damage.

1) "Faster". A burst damage class that is supposed to be competitive by choosing when it fights. That's it. That's all NBs do better than other classes. At the same time, the highest damage output skills (incap + relentless) have cast times or travel times.

The reality bites when you factor in awful online performance. If this were a LAN party, maybe NBs would be top tier. But giving your main damage outputs cast and travel times (or in the case if the execute, a miniscule range), you are reducing their strike rate to below 50% because lag and desyncs essentially extend the length of dodge roll invulnerability by 100%. Incap should have it's cast time changed to "Instant". Relentless should have no travel time and possibly a new animation to make it feel more like a mystical NB attack and less like a bow skill.

2) Higher damage output. So I main a stamblade. Stacked into damage. Without EMP buffs in cyrodiil I have 23HP. But my issue is not that I cannot do damage. It is that when another NB ganks me while I am on a siege engine, I do not die. I can count the times I have been one-shot killed by a gank combo in the last six months on one hand. I should be flattened by that sort of stealth attack relatively frequently with such low HP but it doesn't happen. When doing my own ambushes I won't even look at a target above 29HP because I know a gank combo won't finish them. And that means about 75% of players are off limits to a stealth kill.

To the people requesting nerfs to Incap and Cloak: build a NB and try using those skills. They are not OP and trying to use either as a crutch will get you killed. People seem to mistakenly believe you stun off incap with 70ulti but you don't. You stun off a 120ulti Incap, which brings it in line with DB, yet Incap is single target. So, if you request Incap nerfs then please also request that your DB gets nerfed to single target to retain parity.

BeardyNerd

1. Grim Focus (and morph)

This skill remains incredibly clunky. The need to activate and maintain awareness of this (no proper UI notifications without addons), accumulate the required hits (again, without any UI input), ensure you spot the icon colour change, activate the proc, and then continue this without forgetting if the skill is still active and avoiding reactivating it again before the proc is up. It feels like a mess yet remains integral to NB dps.

This skill is cool. It has so much potential. It feels 'nightbladey'. But the implementation is pants. Just give it combo points. Just have it always active when slotted. It opens the door for other combo point finisher moves, when slotted. I'm not saying make NBs exactly like rogues in WoW, but for finishers like this, a combo point system of some sort would be ideal.

2. Role play, i.e. small blades and magic

Nightblades still need that 'using small blades and wielding magic' vibe. Stamina is very reliant on using non-class skills and that detracts from the class fantasy, in my opinion. Magicka makes using melee weapons pointless beyond being for show. You can make your blood mage easily enough, but you can't really make your magic wielding, stealthy rogue with a dagger. Fixes are many, bu all are probably difficult. Single weapon and magic skill line likely the best solution.

Vermintide

Alright so I had a few games earlier and it seems as though little has changed on this class in the 6 months since I last installed this game. I've been playing Magblade near exclusively since Morrowind and here are my thoughts. My main concern is PVP, so in the interest of balance I have tried to consider this as conservatively as possible, focussing only on the things that are critical problems.

- Lacking an in-class speed buff. Forced to rely on RAT, and it just feels bad. I don't see any real reason we can't have expedition on a class skill like Mirage. We have a gap close and a teleport, which is great, but for a class that relies on controlling the fight, we need a way to get out of range of the hated jabs spam for example.

- Heals are still a problem, although this one is more understandable from a design perspective, and it's not as bad since the Merciless change. But it's still an uphill struggle, and the obvious synergy you can see through the class with Siphoning skills just doesn't exist in reality. Nightblades should be incentivised to use those skills, instead of just slotting a shield and rapid regen.

The most important critical flaw however, is simply:

- Cast time and unreliability of skills. From a magblade perspective particularly, you simply can't rely on your skills to function properly at anything above 50ms. The cast time on incap really hurts, the travel time on merciless is way too long. All of your ranged skills can be 100% negated. This is a class where you already need to wait for Mars and Earth to align, be facing north, on a Tuesday, wearing the correct colour shirt for the conditions to be right to drop your kill combo. It really sucks when you jump through each of those hoops only to see DODGE pop up in the middle of your screen.

The class isn't totally unplayable, and on paper not even really weak. You can still do damage, and it's understandable ZOS would like there to be a trade-off for the ability to just pop stealth and nope out of a bad situation. But the handicap you're taking for playing a nightblade at the minute is one of janky mechanics and poorly thought out implementations, not balance. The skills you require on your bar for nightblade are very rigid; so we can't afford to go swapping things around in order to cover a shortcoming, because there are too many skills we need slotted in order to function.

TL;DR: There are enough counters to stealth. Nightblade does not deserve to have its class toolkit gutted in order to make up for the fact it has stealth. The tools it has left don't work as well as they should.

QuebraRegra

oXI_Viper_IXo wrote: »

By "pain points" do you mean what we feel is lacking while playing NB or what is overpowered about them while playing against them?

@ZOS_GinaBruno

this is VERY interesting, and I think spotlights just how the PVE versus PVP aspects require entirely separate balancing.

Crash427

People still post in here? When was the last time a dev even commented about where NBs are at?

wheresbes

Crash427 wrote: »

People still post in here? When was the last time a dev even commented about where NBs are at?

You know, hope never dies

QuebraRegra

brandonv516 wrote: »

Vermintide wrote: »

your own DOTs break cloak

Wait, wait. This one is new. Is that intentional or a bug?

Yes our own DoTs.

Soul Tether is a big one. I'll cast it and remain in the tether but I'll watch myself keep coming out of Cloak with nothing else I can see pulling me out.

yer own procs from sets will break it as well. back in the golden age, I'd never run a nightblade without cloak... now, i can't remember the last time I slotted it in PVE

nerfed a fundamental class aspect into the ground