So what was the point of saying you'll buff swallow soul?

Prionyx · August 24

What was the point of making such a cool change with 10% damage just to scrap it NEXT week leaving it just as useless as it was before?

Soarora · August 24

What was the point in making another thread when you just made one about this the other day?

Prionyx · August 24

Soarora wrote: »

What was the point in making another thread when you just made one about this the other day?

Wording in original post was confusing and not it's clear they just wanted to nerf it

Daoin · August 24

in pve though its a use one time and forget for nightblades so i would say there will be no difference even the nerf it to the ground or max it to ceiling

MashmalloMan · August 24

Soarora wrote: »

What was the point in making another thread when you just made one about this the other day?

After they were proven wrong with the uploaded patch notes, they had to start a new thread to push a new narrative.

The ability is 25% stronger than live at max health so I can't understand the reason to complain at this point, this is the first time in 10 years that the ability can actually compete as a proper spammable and it's before the super strong class set and insane healing is a consideration.

It seems the goal posts have shifted, OP just prefers the blanket 10% presumably because they wanted to use it as a 10s buffer to improve everything they do including another spammable and/or proc set, which everyone made clear was a bad idea, which they rightfully corrected.

If you think a 28m spammable with a consistent 3k+ tooltip (w/ class set), nearly the same damage as Blastbones and Curse, half of that damage as spammable and passive healing is "useless", I've lost all ability to reason with you OP.

Callosum · August 24

This was a good change

Daoin · August 24

Zallion · August 24

Why complain, this is going to put ranged magblade back into relevance

Daoin · August 24

Callosum wrote: »

This was a good change

i dont have much say in how others like to enjooy eso, but for me the only good change will be the day devs say to themselves well we are happy now we'lll never change another thing...was thinking about it last night..thinking the day will come..but it wont

MashmalloMan · August 24

Molten Whip = 2399 (3598 PVP - 4798 PVE)
Flame Lash = 2323 (3556)

Concealed Weapon = 2556 (2811)
Surprise Attack = 2399 + 350 Sunder

Swallow Soul = 1792 (2688 - 3413 w/ Class set)

Crushing Shock = 2091 + Higher Status Effect Chance
Flame Skull = 2090 (3035)
Cutting Dive = 2091 + 2144/10s
Crystal Frag = 2483 (4124)
Crystal Weapon = 2091 + 836 + 836
Crushing Weapon = 2159 (1124 Spell Orb/5s)
Silver Shard = 2091

Haunting Curse = 3000 x 2 over 12s
Blighted Blastbones = 3600 + 400 Disease

Seriously, what more do you want? It has more consistently higher damage than any other ranged spammable that has highs and lows due to their mini games, staying between 80-100% health is easy, it's the only one to have insane healing. It even competes, and almost surpasses some melee spammables in terms of consistency and ease of use. The only downside is the timed burst, but guess what Mercilous Resolve is for?

rlindsey912nub18_ESO · August 24

Lmao so no nb buffs and who is playing range nb anyway in PvP no one and stop trying to force range nb on everyone and just buff the class already like I genuinely don’t understand what they are afraid of buffing nbs in PvP it sux

ArctosCethlenn · August 24

rlindsey912nub18_ESO wrote: »

Lmao so no nb buffs and who is playing range nb anyway in PvP no one and stop trying to force range nb on everyone and just buff the class already like I genuinely don’t understand what they are afraid of buffing nbs in PvP it sux

There are dozens of us!

Ok no, but still nice for siphoner magblades.

Major_Toughness · August 24

Swallow Soul has been nerfed, in theory only marginally, but is the opposite of what they were intending.

They nerfed the base tooltip damage, but the new additional damage is applied far later in the damage calculation on top of your existing damage bonuses.

In practise on PTS this felt significantly less damage in duels, so maybe theres also something strange going on with battle spirit, I don't know.

Lets say your base tooltip is 10,000, and you are running Soulcleaver as it was the only way to get any meaningful damage from Swallow Soul.
You have Minor Beserk too from Monomyth.
So your damage done multipliers are 100+15+12+5 = 132% damage (15 and 12 from soulcleaver)
10,000 * 1.32 = 13,200

Since we now have 17% less base damage, but an additional 25% damage (in previous post it was said it was capped at 50% health for new bonus, patch notes do not mention this though)
Base is now 8300, and our bonuses are 157%
8300 * 1.57 = 13,031

The more damage buffs you have, the worse this change is, but on a "standard" Swallow Soul PvP build, this change is actually a nerf, by 1%.

Theoretically you could swap Soulcleaver for something like War Maiden, which is roughly 10% base damage, but I doubt it would come out on top, and you would have weaker healing.

EDIT: This also doesn't take into account the new damage buff is also weaker at lower HP, which could have been why damage in a duel was so miserably low, and a bigger nerf.

React · August 24

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Swallow Soul has been nerfed, in theory only marginally, but is the opposite of what they were intending.

They nerfed the base tooltip damage, but the new additional damage is applied far later in the damage calculation on top of your existing damage bonuses.

In practise on PTS this felt significantly less damage in duels, so maybe theres also something strange going on with battle spirit, I don't know.

Lets say your base tooltip is 10,000, and you are running Soulcleaver as it was the only way to get any meaningful damage from Swallow Soul.
You have Minor Beserk too from Monomyth.
So your damage done multipliers are 100+15+12+5 = 132% damage (15 and 12 from soulcleaver)
10,000 * 1.32 = 13,200

Since we now have 17% less base damage, but an additional 25% damage (in previous post it was said it was capped at 50% health for new bonus, patch notes do not mention this though)
Base is now 8300, and our bonuses are 157%
8300 * 1.57 = 13,031

The more damage buffs you have, the worse this change is, but on a "standard" Swallow Soul PvP build, this change is actually a nerf, by 1%.

Theoretically you could swap Soulcleaver for something like War Maiden, which is roughly 10% base damage, but I doubt it would come out on top, and you would have weaker healing.

EDIT: This also doesn't take into account the new damage buff is also weaker at lower HP, which could have been why damage in a duel was so miserably low, and a bigger nerf.

@ZOS_Kevin this comment is worth reading. I'll be getting on to test myself as soon as I can, but multiple friends are reporting the skill actual feels worse than the live version.

ItsNotLiving · August 24

Why are we even messing with this skill at all? Just revert it to how it is on live and raise the tool tip by some small number like 5-8% and move on. Such a weird niche skill to be laser focused on this while pts.

madmufffin · August 24

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why are we even messing with this skill at all? Just revert it to how it is on live and raise the tool tip by some small number like 5-8% and move on. Such a weird niche skill to be laser focused on this while pts.

Why make a simple change when you can add crazy convoluted concepts to the game that likely make performance worse in the process of doing very little to change the performance of a class/skill/etc. Swallow Soul and the Balanced Warrior passive on Templar both have gotten strange overhauls this patch that don't actually do anything of note to move the needle while adding a new complex calculation to an already dodgy game engine.

React · August 24

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why are we even messing with this skill at all? Just revert it to how it is on live and raise the tool tip by some small number like 5-8% and move on. Such a weird niche skill to be laser focused on this while pts.

madmufffin wrote: »

Why make a simple change when you can add crazy convoluted concepts to the game that likely make performance worse in the process of doing very little to change the performance of a class/skill/etc. Swallow Soul and the Balanced Warrior passive on Templar both have gotten strange overhauls this patch that don't actually do anything of note to move the needle while adding a new complex calculation to an already dodgy game engine.

Well I for one am happy to see them attempting to buff swallow - many people probably do not even remember that ranged magicka nightblade was build that people played, because it has been like 7 years since it was in a remotely competitive position. It was one of my personal favorites though, and had a very unique playstyle with the several ranged abilities mixed with one or two melee skills, with the shade for your mobility. It was genuinely a lot of fun to play.

But I agree that the approach is just bizarre, there was no need for it to be this complex. A buff to the tooltip, an increase to the travel speed, or a secondary effect like minor force or similar all could have been things added to make the skill viable without nearly as much fine tuning being required.

ItsNotLiving · August 24

React wrote: »

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why are we even messing with this skill at all? Just revert it to how it is on live and raise the tool tip by some small number like 5-8% and move on. Such a weird niche skill to be laser focused on this while pts.

madmufffin wrote: »

Why make a simple change when you can add crazy convoluted concepts to the game that likely make performance worse in the process of doing very little to change the performance of a class/skill/etc. Swallow Soul and the Balanced Warrior passive on Templar both have gotten strange overhauls this patch that don't actually do anything of note to move the needle while adding a new complex calculation to an already dodgy game engine.

Well I for one am happy to see them attempting to buff swallow - many people probably do not even remember that ranged magicka nightblade was build that people played, because it has been like 7 years since it was in a remotely competitive position. It was one of my personal favorites though, and had a very unique playstyle with the several ranged abilities mixed with one or two melee skills, with the shade for your mobility. It was genuinely a lot of fun to play.

But I agree that the approach is just bizarre, there was no need for it to be this complex. A buff to the tooltip, an increase to the travel speed, or a secondary effect like minor force or similar all could have been things added to make the skill viable without nearly as much fine tuning being required.

Just slap minor force on it and call it a day. I’m sure everything is going to change with the Nightblade refresh in 2032 anyway.

madmufffin · August 24

React wrote: »

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why are we even messing with this skill at all? Just revert it to how it is on live and raise the tool tip by some small number like 5-8% and move on. Such a weird niche skill to be laser focused on this while pts.

madmufffin wrote: »

Why make a simple change when you can add crazy convoluted concepts to the game that likely make performance worse in the process of doing very little to change the performance of a class/skill/etc. Swallow Soul and the Balanced Warrior passive on Templar both have gotten strange overhauls this patch that don't actually do anything of note to move the needle while adding a new complex calculation to an already dodgy game engine.

Well I for one am happy to see them attempting to buff swallow - many people probably do not even remember that ranged magicka nightblade was build that people played, because it has been like 7 years since it was in a remotely competitive position. It was one of my personal favorites though, and had a very unique playstyle with the several ranged abilities mixed with one or two melee skills, with the shade for your mobility. It was genuinely a lot of fun to play.

But I agree that the approach is just bizarre, there was no need for it to be this complex. A buff to the tooltip, an increase to the travel speed, or a secondary effect like minor force or similar all could have been things added to make the skill viable without nearly as much fine tuning being required.

Swallow being buffed is great and something that's been needed for a while, but why not just buff the tooltip 20%. All this extra stuff just makes the calcs more convoluted as people have already displayed on the forum with the more multiplier not making the skill stronger properly with soulcleaver. I know being ranged gives the skill an inherent benefit over concealed weapon, which seems to be their cause for hesitation with just making it outright as strong on the tooltip, but you use the skill at the expense of losing assassination passives. I think that tradeoff alone justifies them being the same base tooltip. The full walk back from strife buffing your damage by 10% is also quite strange since it was just outright nuked 1 week later with no comment.

Vaqual · August 24

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Swallow Soul has been nerfed, in theory only marginally, but is the opposite of what they were intending.

They nerfed the base tooltip damage, but the new additional damage is applied far later in the damage calculation on top of your existing damage bonuses.

In practise on PTS this felt significantly less damage in duels, so maybe theres also something strange going on with battle spirit, I don't know.

Lets say your base tooltip is 10,000, and you are running Soulcleaver as it was the only way to get any meaningful damage from Swallow Soul.
You have Minor Beserk too from Monomyth.
So your damage done multipliers are 100+15+12+5 = 132% damage (15 and 12 from soulcleaver)
10,000 * 1.32 = 13,200

Since we now have 17% less base damage, but an additional 25% damage (in previous post it was said it was capped at 50% health for new bonus, patch notes do not mention this though)
Base is now 8300, and our bonuses are 157%
8300 * 1.57 = 13,031

The more damage buffs you have, the worse this change is, but on a "standard" Swallow Soul PvP build, this change is actually a nerf, by 1%.

Theoretically you could swap Soulcleaver for something like War Maiden, which is roughly 10% base damage, but I doubt it would come out on top, and you would have weaker healing.

EDIT: This also doesn't take into account the new damage buff is also weaker at lower HP, which could have been why damage in a duel was so miserably low, and a bigger nerf.

I went to test and verify this. I am seeing significantly bigger numbers than on live. Full HP, same setup, same everything, critting the dummy went from 18k-ish to 21k-ish (on Soulcleaver Swallow Soul). It wasn't a proper test, since I didn't do it with clean damage mods, but I only had that 18k number memorized from the fully buffed/debuffed setup (and I can't be bothered to log back on to live and do a sample).

18000 * 0.83 = 14940
14940 * 1.5 = 22.410

It looks like it roughly checks out. Soulcleaver and all damage modifiers will logically be nerfed by 17 % through the base damage nerf. That is effectively as if they knocked off 4.59 % off the Soulcleaver set to go with the Swallow Soul Buff. Maybe they can consider compensatating for that, if that was not already considered.

The wording of the week 3 recap was definitely ambiguous, and I even thought there may be a possibility this could end up being a general damage mod. I was a bit scared it would be something crazy like that. I still don't understand where the 25 % number comes from and why this is circulating. I didn't even conclude that from those initial notes.

Overall it seems to work as intended, albeit with increased risk/reward ratio. The damage gain is certainly substantial on the dummy. I didn't manage to test whether there is in fact an issue with Battle Spirit.

Vaqual · August 24

madmufffin wrote: »

React wrote: »

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Why are we even messing with this skill at all? Just revert it to how it is on live and raise the tool tip by some small number like 5-8% and move on. Such a weird niche skill to be laser focused on this while pts.

madmufffin wrote: »

Why make a simple change when you can add crazy convoluted concepts to the game that likely make performance worse in the process of doing very little to change the performance of a class/skill/etc. Swallow Soul and the Balanced Warrior passive on Templar both have gotten strange overhauls this patch that don't actually do anything of note to move the needle while adding a new complex calculation to an already dodgy game engine.

Well I for one am happy to see them attempting to buff swallow - many people probably do not even remember that ranged magicka nightblade was build that people played, because it has been like 7 years since it was in a remotely competitive position. It was one of my personal favorites though, and had a very unique playstyle with the several ranged abilities mixed with one or two melee skills, with the shade for your mobility. It was genuinely a lot of fun to play.

But I agree that the approach is just bizarre, there was no need for it to be this complex. A buff to the tooltip, an increase to the travel speed, or a secondary effect like minor force or similar all could have been things added to make the skill viable without nearly as much fine tuning being required.

Swallow being buffed is great and something that's been needed for a while, but why not just buff the tooltip 20%. All this extra stuff just makes the calcs more convoluted as people have already displayed on the forum with the more multiplier not making the skill stronger properly with soulcleaver. I know being ranged gives the skill an inherent benefit over concealed weapon, which seems to be their cause for hesitation with just making it outright as strong on the tooltip, but you use the skill at the expense of losing assassination passives. I think that tradeoff alone justifies them being the same base tooltip. The full walk back from strife buffing your damage by 10% is also quite strange since it was just outright nuked 1 week later with no comment.

I agree that adding extra calculations is probably not the best, but making it flat out better than, e.g. Concealed, would also not be a good approach.

acanca · August 24

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Molten Whip = 2399 (3598 PVP - 4798 PVE)
Flame Lash = 2323 (3556)

Concealed Weapon = 2556 (2811)
Surprise Attack = 2399 + 350 Sunder

Swallow Soul = 1792 (2688 - 3413 w/ Class set)

Crushing Shock = 2091 + Higher Status Effect Chance
Flame Skull = 2090 (3035)
Cutting Dive = 2091 + 2144/10s
Crystal Frag = 2483 (4124)
Crystal Weapon = 2091 + 836 + 836
Crushing Weapon = 2159 (1124 Spell Orb/5s)
Silver Shard = 2091

Haunting Curse = 3000 x 2 over 12s
Blighted Blastbones = 3600 + 400 Disease

Seriously, what more do you want? It has more consistently higher damage than any other ranged spammable that has highs and lows due to their mini games, staying between 80-100% health is easy, it's the only one to have insane healing. It even competes, and almost surpasses some melee spammables in terms of consistency and ease of use. The only downside is the timed burst, but guess what Mercilous Resolve is for?

Thanks for the comparisions. So at max health with soulcleaver its almost as strong as a bb? Am i understanding that right?

ArctosCethlenn · August 24

went and checked to compare live numbers vs pts, at 53% health I had a slightly higher tooltip (less than 300 difference) on pts vs live at 100% health, same build including soulcleaver + monomyth. At any % health above ~53% that swallow soul scaled up pretty hard. So if the 25% damage/ 50% health limit mentioned in friday's post is getting added later, the change may end up nerfing swallow soul when paired with soulcleaver but there's a lot of fuzzy math I don't feel like doing, since soulcleaver includes a damage bonus that scales off current health too.

If the version we have as of today is the final version, it's a damage boost until your health drops below a hair above half, at which point you're probably throwing a healthy offering or similar burst heal instead or continuing to swallow souls, but if you're still parsing damage while staying under half health it is a damage loss vs live.

Since the higher damage while at higher HP translates to more healing, it gets harder for people to lower your health, or easier to keep your hp high to maximize swallow + cleaver bonuses.

If the scaling boost from current health remains as-is, it feels like an overly complicated buff.

Vaqual · 12:37AM

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

went and checked to compare live numbers vs pts, at 53% health I had a slightly higher tooltip (less than 300 difference) on pts vs live at 100% health, same build including soulcleaver + monomyth. At any % health above ~53% that swallow soul scaled up pretty hard. So if the 25% damage/ 50% health limit mentioned in friday's post is getting added later, the change may end up nerfing swallow soul when paired with soulcleaver but there's a lot of fuzzy math I don't feel like doing, since soulcleaver includes a damage bonus that scales off current health too.

If the version we have as of today is the final version, it's a damage boost until your health drops below a hair above half, at which point you're probably throwing a healthy offering or similar burst heal instead or continuing to swallow souls, but if you're still parsing damage while staying under half health it is a damage loss vs live.

Since the higher damage while at higher HP translates to more healing, it gets harder for people to lower your health, or easier to keep your hp high to maximize swallow + cleaver bonuses.

If the scaling boost from current health remains as-is, it feels like an overly complicated buff.

The limit wasn't really mentioned. People are just construing this from the original wording. It said "up to 50% Health at max". Which reads relatively clearly as a typo or sloppy expression for "50 % at max health". I do not think a 25 % cap is or was intended.

Prionyx · 11:58AM

Zallion wrote: »

Why complain, this is going to put ranged magblade back into relevance

How? They nerfed it

Red99 · 12:58PM

Prionyx wrote: »

Zallion wrote: »

Why complain, this is going to put ranged magblade back into relevance

How? They nerfed it

before saying untrue things I advise you to test in the pts, with the same build I have a significant increase in damage in the pts at full HP with same buffs/debuffs

acanca · 1:48PM

Red99 wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

Zallion wrote: »

Why complain, this is going to put ranged magblade back into relevance

How? They nerfed it

before saying untrue things I advise you to test in the pts, with the same build I have a significant increase in damage in the pts at full HP with same buffs/debuffs

I'm doing around 30k with SS on live, same build, same cps its doing 40k on pts or around 2/3rds of a bow proc with the same build. I dont wanna call it overpowered or anything because when i actually play the build on live my opinion is an adamant 'yea a 25% buff isnt going to save this skill' but im still cautiously hyped.

ArctosCethlenn · 2:25PM

Prionyx wrote: »

Zallion wrote: »

Why complain, this is going to put ranged magblade back into relevance

How? They nerfed it

Max health:

vs pts:

50%:

50% on pts:

All with cleaver.

Yeah there's a point where the pts one is weaker, but its in bloody execute range, so you toss out a 20k+ offering and go back to chunking people.

I am a little annoyed they snuck in a slight nerf to the healing ratio and didn't say anything, but the damage increase means we're still gaining healing anyways.

Luneca · 2:35PM

rlindsey912nub18_ESO wrote: »

Lmao so no nb buffs and who is playing range nb anyway in PvP no one and stop trying to force range nb on everyone and just buff the class already like I genuinely don’t understand what they are afraid of buffing nbs in PvP it sux

NB is in a bad place right now, but it isn't extinct like arcanist. Though with the cloak change, I am not so sure. For NBs that know how to utilize the i-frame on invisibility, ranged damage is extremely powerful. Most of the time on my NB I just fire siege though, because...well I can take out over 25 AD with siege alone, (they don't heal or use siege shield for some reason) so why would I go down there and die?

Abstraqt · 7:55PM

It's bizarre this swallow soul update has been so complicated, especially when there are many other abilities on night blade which would benefit from an update to help bring NB in line with other classes, it's a shame we're nearly all the way through the PTS and it's been 4 weeks spent complicating a spammable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy Zos acknowledge nightblades need some help, but it just seems like so much time has been wasted on one skill, and it's nowhere near enough to get the class out of the grave!

madmufffin · 9:57PM

Abstraqt wrote: »

It's bizarre this swallow soul update has been so complicated, especially when there are many other abilities on night blade which would benefit from an update to help bring NB in line with other classes, it's a shame we're nearly all the way through the PTS and it's been 4 weeks spent complicating a spammable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy Zos acknowledge nightblades need some help, but it just seems like so much time has been wasted on one skill, and it's nowhere near enough to get the class out of the grave!

They could've just flat increased the swallow soul tooltip by 20% and invested more time into an actual issue. Dumping this much effort into some convoluted conditional buff just doesn't make sense.