Range Magicka Nightblade Open World Difficulty

Stamicka · February 2017

One of my main pvp characters is a magic Nightblade, I find it pretty effective in duels or a 1 to 1 situation, but in open world it feels clunky and hopeless. I don't really like the heavy armor playstyle or just heavy armor in general so I just stick to light armor. Below are some open world problems that I and maybe other light armor range mageblades hope to see addressed in the future

1. The pvp lag worsens the already complicated gameplay
As a range mageblade, basically everything revolves around light attack weaving, sustain, damage, and merciless resolve proc. However in crowded campaigns the lag affects destruction staff attack animations worse than other animations, this can cause you to mess up light attack weaving (which is already slightly messed up when it comes to swallow soul) or even worse brief freeze screens after each kill which can ruin a 1vx

2. Mobility/ ability to escape a Zergy situation is very limited
In a 1 on 1 situation, the 40% movement increase from cripple makes for great mobility, but when against several people, snares and roots get the best of you, and there's not much counterplay. For Stam there's shuffle, templars can purge them, sorcs have streak, (mDKs suffer from this too maybe) but once a mageblade is snared or rooted, a group will probably kill you. Especially if you only have 2 shields. I'd suggest making the shade be castable without target, and also have the ability to remove snares, this would definitely make mobility easier.

3. Merciless Resolve is clunky
This skill is extremely unreliable for how important it is. With elements like dodge chance, multiple targets, and having to maintain defense, the small time frame that you can fire the spectral bow can easily pass, ruining the burst you tried to set up. However, that's assuming you get the spectral bow proc, every once in awhile, this skill simply doesn't work, adding to the frustration, this definitely needs changing.

4. Cloak doesn't work
Cloak is a strategic and defensive skill for Nightblades, but it's simply not working right now, leaving magicka Nightblades with only two shields for defense. With extremely powerful sets out there and the insanely high damage in pvp right now, 2 shields absolutely don't cut it. Defense as is, is hard to keep up on any magicka build would be nice to get cloak to work again.

Now I'm not talking about the bomber magicka Nightblade playstyle which is actually successful in open world, I'm referring to a destro\ resto weaving style gameplay. It's ridiculous that to be successful I have to become a bomber. I'd really like to see changes come to the table so that mageblades are strong without having to bomb.

Please feel free to contribute any difficulties you have!

Sharee · February 2017

If you want to truly appreciate cloak, play a solo mDK for a few months.

Jitterbug · February 2017

Good post. I also main mag blade in open world and I can relate to a lot of what's in this post.
Especially since this post doesn't seem to want nbs to become stronger, simple work properly.

All the issues you say you are having I'm having too...

Knootewoot · February 2017

Well, I don't like playing ranged magicka nightblade since I don't like sticks. But even for melee magicka nightblade the same can be said, except in duals you might even stand less chance.
Light armor really stinks these days even full impenetrable and once I have the urge to log back in (haven't for a week now) I will craft myself a heavy armor for PvP all hakaijo and infused or impenetrable.
Sadly most of my melee attack get nullified for some reason if I attack other players. Sometimes they die very quick and my guess is they wear LA full divine. But the most probably wear HA.
At least ranged attacks give better opportunities. So I might even go ranged + HA as magicka NB.

But then I see youtube movies of magblades (ranged) wiping out entire raids while doing emotes in between and I know these players adapt their buils after every patch. And I am here still stuck in my old 1.5 build which was viable back then.

Well, after I sort out things I will try to adapt as well finally.

thankyourat · February 2017

cloak is a garbage skill I dropped it completely in dark brotherhood and never looked back. mist form is sadly better than any mobility tool in the magblade toolkit for open world. Also light armor is horrible I dropped that as well in dark brotherhood. Heavy is so much better on magblade you really don't have to switch your playstyle to make it work, and it allows you to not run annulment. If they would just add root and snare removal to cloak that would fix so many magblade problems. Adding root and snare removal and immunity to blur is also an idea. Magblade mobility is in such a bad spot that if you aren't running mist form and a magplar or a mag dk is they have better mobility than you. Which I find crazy because the nightblade class is all about mobility. I don't know what they can do to merciless to make it better for open world without making it op in 1v1. Another thing I find that hurts magblade is it lacks a burst heal while hots are nice 1v1 they won't keep you alive while being pressured by multiple opponents. Combined that with the fact that you don't have mobility you are basically there spamming healing ward but you'll never get the heal while being pressured. It also doesn't synergize well with mist form. And neither do hots. Buff cloak to give magblades mobility and the class will function open world again.

zammo · February 2017

Stamicka wrote: »

One of my main pvp characters is a magic Nightblade...

...Please feel free to contribute any difficulties you have!

All points made are bang on the money, agree 100%. I'm desperate for for Shade to be cast without target

Jitterbug · February 2017

Why did they take the cleanse off dark cloak morph?

Metemsycosis · February 2017

Mage blade of the sort you describe requires lots of set up. Magelight, major sorcery, mark, damage increase enchant, alchemist or spell weave, minor berserk four light attacks applying dots ewww
That is why they are ideal 1v1 in which they choose the terms of the fight. It is simply a matter of executing a plan with full knowledge of the results before they happen .They are also the best bombers for the same reason. But the necessity for set up makes them poor 1vx, because randomness ...

Look mage blade is a very active class,which makes them harder to play. Especially the light armor kind because defenses require greater attention . You have to push a button every time you wanna mitigate damage . The exceptions are double take and shuffle .

Compare to a los-ing stam sorc. Hurricane (damage that damages without player continuously pushing buttons) high crit + crit surge (Bursty heals without continuous pushing of buttons) shuffle (20% damage reduced without continuous pushing buttons) in heavy armor (resistances unbuffed higher than buffed medium or light) using viper

The fewer buttons I push, the less likely I am to make a mistake .the fewer buttons I have to push to maintain buffs the easier it is to focus on DAMAGING the opponent

***

Second shade with no target but then does it do damage? It shouldn't, then
Wonder why do I not have problems with merciless resolve the way some do? It's even easier to keep track of if you use molag kena 2pc and definitely cc opponent

SneaK · February 2017

I'd like to see them take the timer off of the Merciless proc. As in, you have a time limit to trigger the proc, but once proc'd you have an unlimited amount of time to fire the bow.

I think too many people would whine if we made cloak purge snares/roots. In general, the snares and roots in ESO are just over the top. Slotting Purge is the common shout to anyone that whines about snares, but to be fair ranged magblades don't have room on their bars for that. I think Rat had a good idea in that Blur(Mirage) could act similar to Shuffle and remove snares, it would give a reason to use Mirage over Double Take.

I don't know if they'd ever give magblade a burst heal, but I think the best option to do it would be to make an Agony morph work like the Bow Line's Draining Shot - where, when the CC is broken, you get a burst heal. Another option, maybe not a burst, but they could change the bad Cripple morph to some sort of heal. Seems like that would make it worth questioning to use over grasp anyway.

As far as Cloak goes, it just needs to work properly, and they need to quit introducing more and more abilities that "detect" people upon activation.

Nutshotz · February 2017

I've mained a magblade since 1.5. Now we do have some skills that are absolutely garbage and we do lack the burst damage our stamblade has. Magblade is a challenge and I love it.

Cloak- never should of had the purge removed
Shades- shouldn't need a target to activate
Impale- should scale off of magicka as well. Killers blade scales off of Max stam and max weapon damage making impale weak to Killers blade.
Concealed weapon- should have empower buff and make it so that magicka users are only able to use it. Should be no reason why stamblades are at 85% speed while magblade are at 40%
Swallow soul- give the HoT back that it originally had
Dbl take- give the original evasion and speed back and add snare resist/immunity like shuffle

The nightblade CC's. Everyone says they are broken. They are only broken when combo'd with other CC's. Hard and soft CC's.

Now as getting into range. I play range. The set up I have does insane burst but if I can't burn the target in under 4 seconds I'm onto the next. It's the way this build is built. A lot of players hate this build cuz it has soul assault in it and my tool tip on soul assault is 102k. They say it's a cheese build. Than what do you call all these stamblades that run viper with Vele or selene and clever. That build does more burst dmg in 1 second than I do in 4.

I can go on and on about things to make magblades on par with stamblades but not making them insanely OP. Yes magblades need love whether youre playing melee or range

thankyourat · February 2017

SneaK wrote: »

I'd like to see them take the timer off of the Merciless proc. As in, you have a time limit to trigger the proc, but once proc'd you have an unlimited amount of time to fire the bow.

I think too many people would whine if we made cloak purge snares/roots. In general, the snares and roots in ESO are just over the top. Slotting Purge is the common shout to anyone that whines about snares, but to be fair ranged magblades don't have room on their bars for that. I think Rat had a good idea in that Blur(Mirage) could act similar to Shuffle and remove snares, it would give a reason to use Mirage over Double Take.

I don't know if they'd ever give magblade a burst heal, but I think the best option to do it would be to make an Agony morph work like the Bow Line's Draining Shot - where, when the CC is broken, you get a burst heal. Another option, maybe not a burst, but they could change the bad Cripple morph to some sort of heal. Seems like that would make it worth questioning to use over grasp anyway.

As far as Cloak goes, it just needs to work properly, and they need to quit introducing more and more abilities that "detect" people upon activation.

Yes I don't really want a burst heal on magblade I like the playstyle it already has with kiting to keep your hots ticking. I brought up a burst heal only because we have no mobility right now and mist form disables your hots so it's counter productive to the magblade playstyle.

PeaNutShotz wrote: »

I've mained a magblade since 1.5. Now we do have some skills that are absolutely garbage and we do lack the burst damage our stamblade has. Magblade is a challenge and I love it.

Cloak- never should of had the purge removed
Shades- shouldn't need a target to activate
Impale- should scale off of magicka as well. Killers blade scales off of Max stam and max weapon damage making impale weak to Killers blade.
Concealed weapon- should have empower buff and make it so that magicka users are only able to use it. Should be no reason why stamblades are at 85% speed while magblade are at 40%
Swallow soul- give the HoT back that it originally had
Dbl take- give the original evasion and speed back and add snare resist/immunity like shuffle

The nightblade CC's. Everyone says they are broken. They are only broken when combo'd with other CC's. Hard and soft CC's.

Now as getting into range. I play range. The set up I have does insane burst but if I can't burn the target in under 4 seconds I'm onto the next. It's the way this build is built. A lot of players hate this build cuz it has soul assault in it and my tool tip on soul assault is 102k. They say it's a cheese build. Than what do you call all these stamblades that run viper with Vele or selene and clever. That build does more burst dmg in 1 second than I do in 4.

I can go on and on about things to make magblades on par with stamblades but not making them insanely OP. Yes magblades need love whether youre playing melee or range

I find that when I play melee magblade I have alot more burst than basically any class in the game. I definitely think it hits harder than my stamblade with potential burst. Assassins will from a dual wield bar hits like a truck lol I've hit someone for 23k before. With melee magblade you can basically one shot anyone with your burst combo, but there are a few problems I've found it to have along with cloak and and snares like you brought up, melee magblade is just too squishy. The next problem is it's alot harder too sustain than a destro magblade it doesn't synergize as well with siphoning attacks. And the main problem I have is bar space I'm always missing a skill I need I just can't fit all the skills I need onto my bar. The main benefit of melee was that you just hit so much harder than destro you could basically one shot anyone who had less than 30k health. With the destro buff in the next patch I don't know if that would be the case still

RedFireDisco · February 2017

For me Merciless is so broken right now. I've tested several times. Cast/light/light/light/light no Proc.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I've back barred it and slotted entropy to empower my swallow in longer battles and lets me run health/lingering heath pots instead of sorc pots, meaning I can burst heal with a potion, plus it gives me another 1000 mag & health.

I find the Heavy/Swallow/Blade does the trick now more, if not Heavy/Swallow/Entropy/Swallow/Blade

leepalmer95 · February 2017

The main thing that kills mag nb in open world is snares.

Any random snare and your dead, you can't heal like a templar, you can't stack or have the mobility of sorc, you can't purge snares efficiently enough.

Master_Kas · February 2017

Same problems as melee magblade.

A snare removal/immunity on double take/mirage is desperately needed for magblades.

Or on cloak.

leepalmer95 · February 2017

RedFireDisco wrote: »

For me Merciless is so broken right now. I've tested several times. Cast/light/light/light/light no Proc.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I've back barred it and slotted entropy to empower my swallow in longer battles and lets me run health/lingering heath pots instead of sorc pots, meaning I can burst heal with a potion, plus it gives me another 1000 mag & health.

I find the Heavy/Swallow/Blade does the trick now more, if not Heavy/Swallow/Entropy/Swallow/Blade

Empowering a swallow is just a waste.

RedFireDisco · February 2017

leepalmer95 wrote: »

RedFireDisco wrote: »

For me Merciless is so broken right now. I've tested several times. Cast/light/light/light/light no Proc.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I've back barred it and slotted entropy to empower my swallow in longer battles and lets me run health/lingering heath pots instead of sorc pots, meaning I can burst heal with a potion, plus it gives me another 1000 mag & health.

I find the Heavy/Swallow/Blade does the trick now more, if not Heavy/Swallow/Entropy/Swallow/Blade

Empowering a swallow is just a waste.

More than a waste pointless. I empower my heavy (Elegant set, 27 points in staff). I never knew until recently that swallow doesn't get empowered, but the good news is now my heavy crits for plenty