Dark Cloak - voice from a pve NB tank

Lykeion · July 2022

I am a pve NB player who mainly plays tanks. Maybe this is not a very popular choice, but we NB tank players do exist, so zos, before you do make changes to the cloak, please listen to us first.

I'd like to do some simple calculations first. While the live server Dark Cloak restored 9.2% of your max health per second, in the latest PTS3, the cloak's effect was changed to restore 11%-14% of your lost health per second. The break-even point for this change is about 16%, which means you have to lose up to 84% of your health in PTS to get the same amount of health restored per second as in the live server, which is literally one blow to death, even if you are a tank. Also, PTS cloak's healing drops dramatically as soon as you regain a bit of health. This makes it an unreliable healing skill.
I believe that the mechanic of healing based on health lost comes from DK's Dragon Blood. Extending this mechanic to other class erases the differences between classes, which is not good. Also, even though DK is the best tank class in the game, the Dragon Blood mechanic is not that welcome. Its ability to restore based on lost health may save your life in a pinch, but it's obviously not reliable at all times. Besides, Dragon Blood provides a lot of buffs in addition to recovery, but Dark Cloak provides only a Minor Protection. It's neither fair nor reasonable to have them use the same mechanics.

As a NB, the Dark Cloak is the only skill in my class that restores scaling off the maximum health, and it is the only recovery skill that NB tanks can rely on. In normal trials, other skills may be used as alternatives to cloak, such as Refreshing Path, such as Vigor, but considering that they all recover scaling off maximum resources, their healing effect is hardly enough to meet the damage to the tank in harder trials. I've never seen a NB tank in the HM log that didn't use a cloak. And if PTS change comes live, veteran trials may be enough to keep NB tanks out of the door.

I barely ever hear anyone say that this skill is too overpowered. It's just okay. In pve it is only used by NB tanks. For NB dps its recovery is not as effective as Vigor and Strife. In pvp, apparently the other morph of the cloak is more widely used. And the recovery ability of pvp NB tanks using Dark Cloak is only average. Dark Cloak doesn't need to change, it's balanced enough now.
I don't understand your reasoning for such a severe nerf to Dark Cloak, zos, why would you take away the only recovery skill that NB tanks can count on? Did anyone ask for it? You've gotten tons of feedback since the update 35 changelog was released. You may have accepted some of them and made changes to PTS, and that's good. But most of them are ignored and there are many more changes coming that were not requested by players at all. This is hard for me to understand.

One thing I used to like about ESO is that while there are optimal choices, every class can play the role of dps, healer and tank. I used to be a good NB dps, but I now enjoy playing NB tank and NB healer. It makes me feel special and I perform very well. Please don't tell me that I was wrong all along. Please don't let me down. Please don't make me quit.

Everaen · July 2022

I recently started dabbling with tanks, and NB tank in particular just because I like NB's and never see NB tanks. I use this ability a lot so far.

I'm not sure who asked for this. I see PvPer's complaining about the other morph that gives NB stealth, not the heal morph, so I don't think this was for PvP balance. And why would anyone have complained about it for PvE? Why not actually leave some skills good for NB tanking to encourage more NB tanks?

It's not a make-or-break change for me, but it is a bummer. I just can't fathom why ZoS has proposed this change, as well as most of the other ones.

Necrotech_Master · July 2022

i suggested in another thread that this morph should be treated more similar to coagulating dragon blood from DK, where it has a fixed heal + scaling depending on missing health

green dragon blood morph on a DK has similar issues to what dark cloak will have where its heal is going to be very poor if your above 50% hp (the only reason i use green dragon blood is due to the stam recov bonus on a stam dk)

a base heal amount of like 1-2k per sec, then scaled up based on severity of wounds would make it strong at low hp, but not useless at high hp

exeeter702 · July 2022

It's highly reminiscent of the old swallow soul nerf when they removed minor vit from it, as if that was causing issues for non stealth NB builds being too tanky or self sustaining when that was not the case whatsoever. It's hilarious....

Going into this update I thought to myself since they were semi retreating from their whole ability power audit stance on how "loaded" a given skill is allowed to be, I maybe just giving back minor vit to swallow soul and a slightly bit stronger dark cloak for practical use on NB builds that were tankier but maybe not building for 40+k hp.

The fact they they are actually making the skill WORSE is absurd to me. And the cherry on top is seeing the multiple components of sneak attack, and doing nothing for either of the strife morphs.

The current pts changes to dark cloak are completely nonsensical, non stealth caster NBs that lean into attrition playstyle, use dark cloak as a core sustain tool that keeps their resist passive up along side minor protection. And now, you are heavily disincentivized to use the skill before sitting at 20 percent HP, completely contradicting the syngery between the skill and the passives it benefits from.

What an utter disappointment.

MacCait · July 2022

I've been a Nightblade Tank since the beginning. There was a time, long long ago when Nightblade Tanks were awesome fun in the SapTank days... those days are gone with so many hard hits to Nightblade Tanking... but still I stuck with it. I now have every tank in the game, even a fun werewolf tank. While I play DK for serious content, and others for fun, Nightblade Tank is still my favourite style of Tanking, with DK being the strongest and yet most boring.

The change to Dark Cloak seems completly unnecessary. Again it seems this change is more to do with a PvP problem than a PvE issue. All of this could be finally solved if Elder Scrolls could finally seperate PvP and PvE like other games have. This would greatly help PvE'ers and PvP'ers alike.

It would be refreshing to see Nightblade Tanks recieve changes to enhance Nighblade Tanking instead of continually trashing it into the ground.

umagon · July 2022

The change to skill doesn’t really impact pvp tankblades much. In pvp there isn’t a need to maintain a 40k+ health pool, pvp tanks can run 28k-32k health and still be effective. And all the excess health points can be moved to stam/mag pools to drive skills and sets that scale off those values. And/or move those health points to weapon/spell damage to increase the healing output of skills.

The largest impact is on pve tankblade builds as in end game content where there is a need to maintain 40k+ health pools due to the way the boss mechanics function. So those health points are not mobile.

ZOS wasted time making the changes to the skill. It’s like they forgot the reason why there was a push from players to have a on demand class heal class for the nightblade. The class at the time was only one not have one which severely impacted the class from functioning in the tank role as by the time the push for a change started sap tanking had been eliminated.

So, it doesn’t really make sense because even now on the live server dark cloak alone isn’t what makes tankblades effective in pvp. In pvp it’s a small component that can help but it can also be replaced.

Stalemates happen in pvp because players gravitate to using builds that maximize damage output due to not having to sacrifice said damage to obtain defensive stats. Which creates the situations:

A: Player B must burst down Player C before Player C gets their heal off or the match can stalemate.
B: Player D maximizes their defense stats and recovery to fully counter Player E’s burst rotation. Which directly creates a stalemate.

Combat in pvp is always a battle of extremes in the regards builds due to the way the combat mechanics function. And when there are two opposite builds that so far on either side of the offence/defense scale its almost always going to end in a stalemate especially when both ends still have access to massive health recovery options. And I am not talking about the health recovery stat I am talking about all available options to recover health on demand.

Instead of reworking how healing scales by giving it its own stat and reducing the number of healing effects players can have active any given time to fix the problem once and for all; ZOS for some reason keeps pouring money and time into rescripting individual healing skills over and over to function completely different each time while failing to correct the problem every time.

Opalblade · July 2022

Why nerf something that is already only used by a few people? Tankblade was so much more fun than the usual DK tanks, and it wasn't anywhere near being overpowered. ZOS may as well just turn it into another stealth morph if they want to force all NBs to play gank builds that bad.

Vinzula · July 2022

Your changes to the PTS have created a 'Tank's self-healing' ability that's even worse than 'Polar Wind'.
You are indeed remembered in a different way for a new design team.

Dagobertfuk · July 2022

umagon wrote: »

The change to skill doesn’t really impact pvp tankblades much. In pvp there isn’t a need to maintain a 40k+ health pool, pvp tanks can run 28k-32k health and still be effective. And all the excess health points can be moved to stam/mag pools to drive skills and sets that scale off those values. And/or move those health points to weapon/spell damage to increase the healing output of skills.

The largest impact is on pve tankblade builds as in end game content where there is a need to maintain 40k+ health pools due to the way the boss mechanics function. So those health points are not mobile.

ZOS wasted time making the changes to the skill. It’s like they forgot the reason why there was a push from players to have a on demand class heal class for the nightblade. The class at the time was only one not have one which severely impacted the class from functioning in the tank role as by the time the push for a change started sap tanking had been eliminated.

So, it doesn’t really make sense because even now on the live server dark cloak alone isn’t what makes tankblades effective in pvp. In pvp it’s a small component that can help but it can also be replaced.

Stalemates happen in pvp because players gravitate to using builds that maximize damage output due to not having to sacrifice said damage to obtain defensive stats. Which creates the situations:

A: Player B must burst down Player C before Player C gets their heal off or the match can stalemate.
B: Player D maximizes their defense stats and recovery to fully counter Player E’s burst rotation. Which directly creates a stalemate.

Combat in pvp is always a battle of extremes in the regards builds due to the way the combat mechanics function. And when there are two opposite builds that so far on either side of the offence/defense scale its almost always going to end in a stalemate especially when both ends still have access to massive health recovery options. And I am not talking about the health recovery stat I am talking about all available options to recover health on demand.

Instead of reworking how healing scales by giving it its own stat and reducing the number of healing effects players can have active any given time to fix the problem once and for all; ZOS for some reason keeps pouring money and time into rescripting individual healing skills over and over to function completely different each time while failing to correct the problem every time.

Of coooourseee. Thats why we will get the Dark Cloak heal we have on live servers on 100% player HP, on 10% player hp with the nerfed PTS version in PvP. 2.5k heal at 10% of 40k HP. If the max HP is lower it gets even worse. If this change isnt an impact for you, then your incompetence is unparraleled.

Firstmep · July 2022

This a huge blow for pvp nightblades too.
Already barely a few ppl run this morph over shadowy disguise, but this nerf will likely kill of the skill in pvp altogether.
On live dark cloak is a strong hot, but considering what you give up in exchange is pretty fair.
I mean yes, there are some builds that are hard to kill beacuse of it, but this complete butchering of the morph is not the way to go.

Necrotech_Master · July 2022

Firstmep wrote: »

This a huge blow for pvp nightblades too.
Already barely a few ppl run this morph over shadowy disguise, but this nerf will likely kill of the skill in pvp altogether.
On live dark cloak is a strong hot, but considering what you give up in exchange is pretty fair.
I mean yes, there are some builds that are hard to kill beacuse of it, but this complete butchering of the morph is not the way to go.

if this isnt changed in the PTS, then ill likely end up switching back to the swallow soul skill, although it kind of sucks you need a target for that to give you any healing AND the healing is scaled on dmg done

vgabor · July 2022

Honestly it really feels like they just looked at their spreadsheets without even knowing how and when the skill is used in actual content...

Dagobertfuk · August 2022

Lykeion wrote: »

I am a pve NB player who mainly plays tanks. Maybe this is not a very popular choice, but we NB tank players do exist, so zos, before you do make changes to the cloak, please listen to us first.

I'd like to do some simple calculations first. While the live server Dark Cloak restored 9.2% of your max health per second, in the latest PTS3, the cloak's effect was changed to restore 11%-14% of your lost health per second. The break-even point for this change is about 16%, which means you have to lose up to 84% of your health in PTS to get the same amount of health restored per second as in the live server, which is literally one blow to death, even if you are a tank. Also, PTS cloak's healing drops dramatically as soon as you regain a bit of health. This makes it an unreliable healing skill.
I believe that the mechanic of healing based on health lost comes from DK's Dragon Blood. Extending this mechanic to other class erases the differences between classes, which is not good. Also, even though DK is the best tank class in the game, the Dragon Blood mechanic is not that welcome. Its ability to restore based on lost health may save your life in a pinch, but it's obviously not reliable at all times. Besides, Dragon Blood provides a lot of buffs in addition to recovery, but Dark Cloak provides only a Minor Protection. It's neither fair nor reasonable to have them use the same mechanics.

As a NB, the Dark Cloak is the only skill in my class that restores scaling off the maximum health, and it is the only recovery skill that NB tanks can rely on. In normal trials, other skills may be used as alternatives to cloak, such as Refreshing Path, such as Vigor, but considering that they all recover scaling off maximum resources, their healing effect is hardly enough to meet the damage to the tank in harder trials. I've never seen a NB tank in the HM log that didn't use a cloak. And if PTS change comes live, veteran trials may be enough to keep NB tanks out of the door.

I barely ever hear anyone say that this skill is too overpowered. It's just okay. In pve it is only used by NB tanks. For NB dps its recovery is not as effective as Vigor and Strife. In pvp, apparently the other morph of the cloak is more widely used. And the recovery ability of pvp NB tanks using Dark Cloak is only average. Dark Cloak doesn't need to change, it's balanced enough now.
I don't understand your reasoning for such a severe nerf to Dark Cloak, zos, why would you take away the only recovery skill that NB tanks can count on? Did anyone ask for it? You've gotten tons of feedback since the update 35 changelog was released. You may have accepted some of them and made changes to PTS, and that's good. But most of them are ignored and there are many more changes coming that were not requested by players at all. This is hard for me to understand.

One thing I used to like about ESO is that while there are optimal choices, every class can play the role of dps, healer and tank. I used to be a good NB dps, but I now enjoy playing NB tank and NB healer. It makes me feel special and I perform very well. Please don't tell me that I was wrong all along. Please don't let me down. Please don't make me quit.

Im talking from pvp perspective, with halfed heal

Dark Cloak how it is on actual PTS will be a Skill nobody will use ever again. A nerf for no *** reason. Like it was stronger than other Heals. Vigor was way stronger. And since vigor gets major resolve its even less worth it, to even think about using it as a Nightblade.

My Nightblade in Cyrodiil on live servers with 40k HP gets 2,6k hps with dark cloak. After the first Dark Cloak Nerf in pts week one or two, i had to be 50% Player HP to get the heal value from live servers. Right now on pts after the second nerf, i have to be at 10% player HP to get almost old value of 2520 hps. I did the math with the pts maximum of 14%. Even Vampire Drain, a skill nobody with more than 2 braincells is using in PvP to heal up, heals more than actual PTS Dark Cloak.

Any reason why anyone should use PTS Dark Cloak instead of another healing ability other than for style? I can't think of any. Mainly because every other healing ability heals me more by a frightening margin, no matter how much HP I have, except at 10% where Dark Cloak get it old healing value.
Image when i dont have 40k HP. Hard to imagine but it gets even worse rofl.

But a skill that only really works, when i am already with both legs in the grave, in execute range and eating 400% extra dmg from enemy execute's, is a total abilityslot waste.

When zos worked on dark cloak their minds were elsewhere.

Iron_Blurr · August 2022

The new dark cloak in the first week of pts was a joke.
The nerf on top of the new inferior dark cloak is just insulting.
NB tank will be dead if this change goes through.
HoTs are not burst heals. Burst heals are by nature reactive heals used to quickly bring someone back up when taking high levels of damage. A % missing health multiplier works with burst heals but not with HoTs.
The only way it would work with HoT heals is if you buff up the heal ticks to insane levels or near a burst heal. Which would obviously make it OP.
At some point the devs need to have a clear vision or direction for what they want the skill to be.

emilyhyoyeon · August 2022

MacCait wrote: »

The change to Dark Cloak seems completly unnecessary. Again it seems this change is more to do with a PvP problem than a PvE issue. All of this could be finally solved if Elder Scrolls could finally seperate PvP and PvE like other games have. This would greatly help PvE'ers and PvP'ers alike.

There's not a chance it's due to PVP. It is not overpowered in PVP in the slightest and no one has been complaining about it.

But ultimately we don't know the cause of the double nerf because they didn't comment on why in either of the PTS notes.

Dagobertfuk · August 2022

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

MacCait wrote: »

The change to Dark Cloak seems completly unnecessary. Again it seems this change is more to do with a PvP problem than a PvE issue. All of this could be finally solved if Elder Scrolls could finally seperate PvP and PvE like other games have. This would greatly help PvE'ers and PvP'ers alike.

There's not a chance it's due to PVP. It is not overpowered in PVP in the slightest and no one has been complaining about it.

But ultimately we don't know the cause of the double nerf because they didn't comment on why in either of the PTS notes.

Thats typical zos. They change things because they want to change things, doesnt matter the sense.

They also said after high isle will only come minor class changes and tweaks. But ofc they come up with bigger changes than ever before. This company simply doesnt deserve any trust from anyone.

Dagobertfuk · August 2022

Dark Cloak nerf makes it totally useless in PvP. With all that crosshealing going on and hybridscaling everyone is anyway running around with high weapon/spellpower. Those stats even make U35 Vigor stronger than U34 Dark Cloak.

Altrough Vigor will heal for a lot more and grant more uptime on Major Resolve than Dark Cloak with the NB passive Shadowbarrier does with full heavy armor setup.

Full heavy armor NB Major Resolve 16s vs vigor's 20s per cast and more healing than pre PTS Dark Cloak.