Ok, so keeping in mind that the difficulty increase is getting fixed, and that we know ZOS is aware and working on non-working skills/class bugs, I and other players have some ideas on how to balance out the NB, or at least a couple of the skill trees.

Now by balance I mean just that, balance. The assassin/shadow trees just don't really feel right. Granted when it works, our stealth is a great tool for pvp as well as pve, but overall the trees seem gimped, damage as well as active skill wise.

Shadow Tree

Shadow Cloak- A staple for the shadow line, I do not personally see any issues with this ability save for its still buggy. Although I will say, that when every character can use stealth and magelight, I will defend the thought of one player who made the argument that magelight SHOULD NOT work against this move. Its only 3 seconds unless you spam it, and that drains your magic pool very fast. We are supposes to be able to stealth better than other classes, don't gimp that.

Veiled Strike- No issues here, or on its morphs.

Paths of Darkness- So many issues with this move. Personally I see this as being better suited to the Siphon skill tree. Its a conal aoe drop, that's maybe 10mx5m, that gives a speed boost while in that small area, that does small aoe damage/healing. First off, the healing from Refreshing Paths is so small at v10, that I can never tell if im actually standing in it when its dropped, or if its just my natural health regen. Why the 50% speed boost? We are not gonna be moving around that much in that small an area, its almost insulting. I can see that many like the move, so ill save further bashing, but id rather this move was a self-target aoe. I hate having to drop a cone in front of me, then having to move into it. Either way, this move is questionable at best.

Aspect of terror- Many underrate this move. I love it when facing certain mobs, and even use it in pvp. However, id rather see the 2 person limit increased to at least 3 or 4. As an aoe, the numbers for this move are far too small.

Summon Shade- This move was fine I suppose when the shade pulled agro. Now though, all it is is a debuff that deals miniscule damage. Why not just make it either a true pet, or just a straight up casted debuff. The morph that lets you teleport to the shade is novel I suppose, but not really great, and if the shade cant pull agro anymore, then personally I feel this is a useless skill.

Assassin Tree

Assassins Blade- When working, this move is great. (Though, as I will explain in a little bit, should not run on magic).

Ambush- Again, a good move, but should get at least a slight stealth hit increase.

Mark target- No debuff like this should also throw the same debuff onto the caster. In trying to weaken your target, you weaken yourself?!? Ok I suppose as a stealth opener you may one shot someone, but this is still terrible. Either allow all party members to hit the target just as hard as you do now after using this (I would of course say nerf the 75% drop in resistance/armor) or at least lower the debuff placed on the player.

Haste- 30% attack speed is still slow attack speed. Make it a flat double, 100% attack speed maxed out. Its an active that boosts normal weapon attack speed, so this needs to be higher. OR, make this into a passive ability, and get us a different move. OR, allow different speeds for different weapons. I.E. 2h gets 34% speed boost, DW gets 75% boost, sword n board get 50% speed boost, etc.

Blur- The worst offender in the NB skill arsenal. There is no other way to say this... A 15% INCREASE IN DODGE CHANCE IS NOT A SKILL YOU SHOULD HAVE TO ACTIVATE. BLUR IS AT BEST, A PASSIVE SKILL FOR MEDIUM ARMOR! OH whats that? Medium armor has the EXACT SAME SKILL AS AN ACTIVE YOU SAY?
You literally just copied one skill into two places.


Lastly, the armor and resource issue. Class skills should not have been blanketed as all magic, and weapon skills as stamina. I see no reason why I use stamina for DW, while a Destro staff ALSO uses stamina for ITS skills.

Simple fix that can be further tweaked is this. All staffs rely on magic pool, all cast abilities rely on magic, all physical abilities rely on stamina, and all weapons other than staff rely on stamina.

All armor passives that give bonuses, should give blank bonuses. You should receive a bonus according to what Glyphs you put in your armor.

Example. Medium armor passive for resource regen is Wind Walker. It gives a 2% stamina regen bonus per piece of medium armor worn. Make that a 2% bonus to regen according to that armors glyphs. So if your slotted for all magic, you can receive up to 14% on your magic regen. If its slotted for 3 magic and 4 stamina, then 6% to magic regen, 8% on stamina.

Please let my know what you think of these ideas, or add/change anything that you might disagree with skill wise from personal experience.