PBpsy wrote: »

I don't think a shield would be to helpful. Harness Magicka fills the need for one pretty nicely. What the NB truly needs a pvp viable instants self heal. For pve we already have some amazing heals.For pvp however,HOTs and heals that are effective when you are surrounded by 6 enemies or require killings something are very lackluster. The second thing it needs is a reliable gtfo skill. Cloak should have to be it but they made it to much of a stupid offensive skill for some reason.If one of the morphs gave something like 30% increased movement speed while invisible and it didn't break so damn easily the class would pretty much be perfect.

Uhm... Path of Darkness combined with a short dash, using sprint is very effective way of escaping. Especially when you snared/cc'ed your opponent prior to using it.

Pvp is not about dmg, its about survival mitgation utility. You don't need top dps in pvp to be good. Thats why dk wins alot.

For haste, there's two possibilities. You can let it go with reducing the gcd on normal attacks (and in that case, change the tooltip to make it fit the effect) or really affect the weapon animation time which would make heavy attacks more useful than they are right now. One fully charged heavy attack in 1.4 seconds along with incapacitate (haste morph) would not only give the 12% extra damage but also the stamina return. IMO haste needs to be changed that way :

Haste : Reduce the time between light attacks by 30%. Heavy attacks charge 30% faster.

With this, you keep the ability to weave *** you do right now, but you offer the possibility to give heavy attacks some usefulness.
No need to change the morphs.

Blur : I think it's pretty useless at the moment, a value of 40-50% would make it useful. I don't want a damage shield, it's not relevant to the class.

And yeah, nightblade do need a self heal that does not require a target. We also need one that is consistent with the class.
My idea would be to use the skill line Shadow (which allready provides a health increase with passives).

So instead of the Shadow Image, I'd like to see the Healing Shadow. It has the same effect (tp back to it) but does not attack, it only heals you.

Healing Shadow : Summons a shade that heals you for 15% of your life every second for a maximum of 75%. The shade disappears if it has healed you for it's maximum. Activate again to teleport to the shade.

So, if you're not in combat, you can heal yourself in 5 seconds and then the shade disappears (meaning you can't tp back to it). If you're in combat, it will heal you, depending on how much life you loose and disappear if you take too much damage.
To prevent the abuse of this, i would also put a 10 seconds CD on this.
And I don't mind if you just delete the tp back, or use the other morph for this (the 2 shades morph).

One other solution would be to replace one skill with a sel heal.

In my view blur is a complete waste because mathematically it is actually a net minus to survivability compared to almost every other skill you an put in that slot. My reasoning is this:

1. Mathematically you have to take 5 hits before you have better than an 50% chance for blur to negate one of them. In many boss or major PVE fights this means you will be dead before it does anything. (As a foot note you have to receive 15 attacks to achieve a 90% probability that at least one would be negated, what a waste).
2. The poor probability compares very badly with shields that always provide mitigation and can simply be reapplied when knocked down.
3. If I recall from my brief testing blur provided no mitigation of AOE while shields provided complete mitigation.

The punchline in my play experience and simply doing the math is that putting blur in your bar reduces survivability compared to most other choices.

In reading the posts, I have come to agree with the view that adding a shield just because the other classes have them is both boring and not very thematic with the NB. I would suggest taking one of the following options:

1. Up the % chance to avoid an attack to a reasonable figure. I would think some where in the 25% to 40% range would work. In that range you would have to receive 2-3 attacks before you got to a 50% or better chance to avoid one of them. You are still going to get strings of bad luck both ways.

2. Put in a straight percentage damage reduction based on the idea that the character is partially in oblivion, the viel, the nether world, the fade, etc. This would parallel the Shadowdancer ability in D&D. This would provide consistent performance that would be less difficult to play balance for PVE.

What do you guys think?