Shadow Cloak: Toggle Ability?

Obscure

Well after a long debate with...well, myself, I decided to throw this in the mix. So, here goes:

Shadow Cloak is not a very good disengage and unfortunately is very much a signature ability if the Nightblade class. The problem with it is it's not reliable in PvP and only useful for exploiting terrible AI programming in PvE. It breaks if you have a DoT active on a target, if you have a DoT active on yourself, if you take direct damage, if you deal direct damage, and is countered by potions of detection as well as Mage Light. Clearly the Dev's have been traumatized by stealth classes in other games and have ensured it's heavily countered in ESO. Fair enough, I played GW2 too.

That said, the Nightblade suffers greatly to the counterplay proliferation in the game particularity due to invisibility being in most cases vastly worse than regular old stealth. It grants no stealth attack bonuses, costs large amounts of magicka to use, is sternly limited in duration, and restricts speed just as standard stealth does. But what if it was functionally different than it is presently by becoming a toggle ability?

To retain balance let's say Shadow Cloak only breaks under the condition of direct damage dealt (attacking). DoT effects on the Nightblade or their DoT effects on enemies do not break it, nor does direct damage received. Instead while toggled Shadow Cloak consumes 13% magicka per second active at Rank 1 (Rank 4 is 10%) and Direct Damage received while using Shadow Cloak effects health normally. However, instead of breaking the effect it is consumes 10% of magicka in addition to sustaining the effect while toggled. Why % based? Simple. This limits the duration it can be used to a relative cap, and allows the Nightblade to spec heavily into Stamina without being heavily punished for that stealth play-style which the class is intended to satisfy.

Furthermore all things that trigger under stealth would apply to Shadow Cloak. Stealth attack bonuses however wouldn't be practical to balance (just see every Nightblade toggling on Cloak, attacking, toggling Cloak, attacking, over and over again. No bueno.) so they would still not be included in the skill. Though Shadow Cloak would no longer be reliant on the stealth crouching animation nor the reduced speed that comes with it (seriously bro, you're invisible. Why are you crouching? It's not making you any harder to see...) thus providing the ability to control engagement and disengagement at full speed which is the entire point of rolling a speedy stealthy class.

Counter play however would still need to exist, so potions of detection and Mage Light would continue to turn off the effect, but instead of a lack of indication that this is the reason you are detected, the ability itself will be desaturated (grayed out but still able to be activated) while in the range of those active effects. Now we won't have NB's spamming the key, draining their magicka, presuming it's bugged (something NB's are familiar with), not really know why the *** it's not working (again). They'll now know they need to GTFO if they want to go invisible again.

As for the Dark Cloak morph it would remove 1 DoT effect every second and restore 5% health if a DoT effect is removed (8% at Rank 4).

As for the Shadowy Disguise morph it would be functionally changed to trigger a 15% miss chance on all incoming attacks for 10 seconds (16 seconds at Rank 4) when you exit invisibility. This creates synergy with the class skill Blur/Mirage/Double Take, with the stereotypical medium armor Nightblade using Evasion/Elude/Shuffle, and the industry standard Dual Wielding assassin using Sparks/Ember Explosion.

Any mechanics that I miss? Would I inadvertently supercharge NB's into OP with a build option I missed? Did I just Nerf them into the floor? I would say feel free to be brutally honest, since I don't personally mind exceptionally harsh criticism, but forum admins being as they are let's be relatively civil for their sake, shall we?

Lynx7386

I dont like it. A lot of nightblades do not focus entirely on stamina (in fact, most successful nightblades dont) - weapon abilities typically scale poorly and do not provide enough utility to consider using over class abilities. In pretty much every weapon type my nightblade has used, I'll reserve -one- slot for a melee stamina ability, and the rest are class abilities (usually ambush, impale, strife, and shadowy disguise).

Stamina-based abilities are just bad in general because of the fact that, while magicka is only used for abilities, stamina is used for abilities as well as sprinting, dodging, blocking, interrupting, and stealth movement. For that reason alone you dont want to spec fully into stamina, you want a significant portion of your damage to come from magicka based abilities.

If the change you're proposing here was implemented, a lot of nightblades would find themselves constantly out of magicka, unable to use their other class abilities and being forced to rely on stamina for all of their damage, defense, and utility needs.

Also, it's likely that such a change would detrimentally effect invisibility in both PvE and PvP. You would no longer be able to use it as an 'interrupt', to stop pve enemies from casting or attacking mid-stride, and the disorienting effect in pvp would be lost. As a tanking nightblade, the ability to maintain aggro while avoiding attacks by becoming invisible is invaluable.

As it is, invisibility can already be used for quite a long duration by repeatedly casting it (If I recall correctly, I can typically use it about 5-6 times in a row with a full mana bar to start), allowing me to sneak by larger groups of enemies.


I know a lot of nightblades want an 'escape', and want invisibility to be that escape, but it just isnt going to happen - look elsewhere. Stacking sprint boosting effects with path of shadows is a good way to get out of a fight quickly, for example.

khele23eb17_ESO

Personally I think they should just add 1 extra second to the duration, a passive to ignore % of incoming damage/grant bonus dmg dealt while invisible to the shadow line and a sneak speed passive to the medium armor line.

But maybe stuff like that is coming in the thief/assassin guild skill lines. Perhaps the NB class was designed/balanced with those guild skills supplementing the class skills in mind. They werent ready by launch so thats why the class feels underwhelming.

Sleepydan

Shadow cloak does not currently disengage. If you chain invis and run around some cover, mobs still come after you.

This is also a blessing. You can shadow cloak mid combat for a full stun concealed weapon. If it did disengage, the mob would heal to full on a shadow cloak.


Ild rather shadow cloak have solo combat tricks than make it be vanish from wow.

My only change would be to give invisibility the stealth combat bonus.

Selodaoc

Shadow Cloak should definatly be made stronger.
Right now it doesnt really add any benefits other then 100% crit for 1 attack.

The duration is way to low, and the reason i use it in PvP is mostly becouse of above, not really for its stealth component.

It would be nice if it automaticly put you in hidden status when used and didnt break on dots.

It would also be nice if it added some dmg bonus when you poped out of it. (not only to normal attacks)

Brittany_Joy

It doesn't seem like magelight reveals Nightblades who use cloak. I had magelight on while fighting other nightblades and they used cloak and I could not see them at all until it ends.