Dual Wield change: Blade Cloak useful or not?

GreyRanger · February 2015

I am curious if anyone has tested out the Blade Cloak on PTS and if you found it useful. I use ember explosion in mass trash pulls on my tank, but I don't know if there is enough AOE that does enough damage in PVE to make Blade Cloak useful.

I will add that it and its morphs are an odd collection of features. I can see what ZOS is going for on this one.

Having a minor heal as its only other utility (e.g, taunt, heal, closer, disabler, and mitigation), it seems important that the power actually be useful for DW to be useful.

PS: Utility effects and melee weapon sets:
S&B: taunt, closer, disabler, lots of mitigation
2Hand: closer, disabler, heal, damage buff
DW: heal (pretty minor) and maybe mitigation if the cloak is worth while.

Shadesofkin · February 2015

I found it very useful. I morphed to deadly so I got the free dagger but I went back and switched to quick and thought the movement speed was a pretty grand thing to have.

mrowmrif2 · April 2015

Eh. I find this skill lacking. The buzz nowadays is all around the merits of DW vs 2H... And 2h seems to be winning. Lets do a balance comparison.

Dual wield:
-twin slashes (blood craze / rending slashes): Two-hit attack, either slight heal over time or snare from morphs.
-flurry (rapid strikes or blinding flurry): Multi hits, good damage... Either slight blindness or scaling damage from morphs.
-whirlwind (steel tornado... No one uses the other morph.): Best aoe melee ability for radius and scaling damage.
-blade cloak... (20% aoe damage reduction and morphs either grant free dagger toss or increased movement speed...
-dagger... Another thrown blade ability for some reason, which I dont think makes sense on a DUAL WIELD skill line...

2handed:
-cleave > brawler... Damage shield and aoe, shield scales with num targets hit.
-charge > critical rush... One of best gap closers with heavy damage.
-uppercut > wrecking blow... Mega damage plus knockdown plus increased next attacks damage...
-reverse slash > executioner... Slotted damage increase to all skills vs low health targets plus really nice execute.
-momentum > rally... 20% weapon damage buff AND nice self heal...

Are you kidding me?

Can we get some adjustments to DW please?? Make blade cloak have a morph that adds a damage shield similar to brawler, resistance to ALL damage for duration or heal you for the damage dealt... or some combo of those three? The perfect candidate for change is the deadly cloak morph... Who needs the free dagger?! Help me out here community...

mrowmrif2 · April 2015

Here are some suggestions:

-blood craze... Instead of damage and heal over time from bleeding, have damage dealt translate directly to healing. (100% damage dealt heals character). Since it is only two slashes, we are talking around 4000-5000 damage tops, so around what rally heals for.

-blade cloak... Have deadly cloak morph provide 20% damage reduction to ALL damage types for the duration... Duration and % reduction increase per rank. 20-22-24-26% at rank IV and lasts for 15-16-17-18 seconds at rank IV.

-thrown blade... Have hidden blade morph apply minor fracture and breach (to compliment skills like puncture or reapers mark, etc) and add bleeding damage... Extending range seems stupid here since DW is a melee focused skill line anyway. If you want range, go with bow skills. At least with choices between area of effect snare and fracture/bleeding on single target you have some nice strategic options.

CaptainObvious · April 2015

Change Blade Cloak back to Sparks. That way there is a good mitigation to the 2 handers. Sparks should have never been replaced in the first place.

Ace_SiN · April 2015

They just need to fix the universal problem with bleeds and allow dots to still tick if landed on someone without a damage shield up(so they still tick after one is up). Shields shouldn't effectively replace purge. DW already gets the benefit of extra weapon damage, so it makes sense that it's not as defensive as a 2hander.

With that said, I like flying blade, because it hits hard and snares from bow range, but I wouldn't mind if it was changed to a gap closer instead.

CaptainObvious wrote: »

Change Blade Cloak back to Sparks. That way there is a good mitigation to the 2 handers. Sparks should have never been replaced in the first place.

They removed all miss skills. I doubt we'll ever see them re-added to the game.

Code2501 · April 2015

Ace_SiN wrote: »

They just need to fix the universal problem with bleeds and allow dots to still tick if landed on someone without a damage shield up(so they still tick after one is up). Shields shouldn't effectively replace purge. DW already gets the benefit of extra weapon damage, so it makes sense that it's not as defensive as a 2hander.

Of course there is also the other problem with bleeds, the pve one where many mobs are straight up immune to it.

Mettaricana · May 2015

toss blade cloak for a new skill entirely i'd love a dashing stunning gap closer skill like a melee version of teleport strike and i want DW passive to work on bleed and stuff rather than on every debuff it can't inflict

GreyRanger · May 2015

Ace_SiN wrote: »

DW already gets the benefit of extra weapon damage, so it makes sense that it's not as defensive as a 2hander.

It is worth remembering that 2 hand also gets a damage bonous passive, so no advantage for DW there.

F7sus4 · May 2015

Nowadays Dual Wield is used by Magicka casters far more often than by Stamina builds.

Alcast · May 2015

Quick Cloak best skill ever

20% AoE damage reduction (although I am not really sure if it works, sb tested?)
And you get a nice DoT which can proc Ravager

Although it could so a bit more damage >.>

Varicite · May 2015

I've messed around w/ the ability, and find it to be a "jack of all trades, master of none" type of skill. It's solid, but still slightly on the underwhelming side.

However, the ability itself is currently bugged.

You can find some more recent discussion of the ability here:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/168713/blade-cloak-do-the-ranks-actually-do-anything/p1

As well as some more information on why it might feel underwhelming currently. : )