NB Perspective: 1.6 Skill Feedback (Positive & Negative) w/ Suggestions

Draehl

I play an attrition based NB in varying combinations of light and heavy. Currently running 5heavy/2light or 7light. Please keep that in mind when reading my thoughts. Thanks!

Positive

• The new Mark Target mechanics are great. I'm appreciative that you can now use it with heavier armor without giving up all that armor. This has definitely helped in letting heavy armor magicka/spellpower builds do passable single target damage without having to deal with the target's full magic resistance.
• Heavy Armor in general feels more useful and viable. Light, Heavy, and combinations all have their place and I'm loving that shades of grey are viable with the removal of the hard-caps.
• I'm really diggin' the Dark Shades damage output. Now that they scale off max magicka they do fairly effective damage- In my gear I measured it as worth roughly 5-6 Funnel Healths. That high damage per button press is nice, especially given NBs weak DoTs (even after the Cripple buff in 1.6) and the 15% debuff is nice as always.
• The changes to Shadow Barrier are excellent. Gaining the armor and spell resist buffs from any shadow spell really open builds up to not using Shadow Cloak, or using it more sparingly. It's great to get that buff after casting Mass Hysteria in particular since that's when you really need it!
• Soul Tether. 'Nuff said. I'm loving the functionality of this skill, particularly for PvE soloing. It does solid damage, stuns, and has a reasonable ult cost.
• The Veil of Blades nerf. Sometimes nerfs are needed to bring out diversity of builds. This skill was too good at everything and was brought down, along with bringing other ults (like Tether) up a notch. I feel like I have several viable ult choices at the moment. Very well done here!

Negatives/Possible Improvements

• Funnel Health's damage, relative to everything else, feels modestly nerfed. I've also seen this sentiment from others on the forums. It would be nice to see the damage and mana cost both increase proportionally by a small amount. The damage, and subsequent healing from the skill feels less impactful than it previously did/should.
• Debilitate. Even when I go heavy armor(IE magicka starved) I see very few scenarios where this is more useful than Crippling Grasp- which provides more overall damage AND an immobilize. If I might suggest, increase the duration of Debilitate to ~15s or so- in this way Crippling Grasp does higher DPS (due to the upfront damage), but Debilitate does more damage per-cast and per-magicka-spent. It would be a very attractive DoT in cases where you don't need an immobilize or that little extra upfront damage. I still probably wouldn't use it as a PvPer, but it would make it more attractive for others.
• Grim Focus. I understand there are already threads on this topic, but I must say this is a very interesting skill that unfortunately doesn't flow very well into realistic combat scenarios due to the number of light attacks required, duration of the buff, scenarios where you are CCed, etc. Several solutions could work-
  • Reduce the number of attacks needed to proc it and/or let skills proc it too.
  • Using the proc could re-start the damage buff and not require pressing the same button twice in a row. It's this reason that even against bosses its only a modest damage gain since you waste 2 skill activation to get back to where you started.
  • Once procced, let it stay available much longer, if not indefinitely. If I fight one mob, trigger it just as it dies I shouldn't have to scramble to find a mob to use it on.
  • Possibly add a PvP/tanking application to it and allow charges to be generated when you are attacked. Max of 1 charge from an incoming attack every 5? seconds.
• Refreshing Path in particular, even after the newest round of buffs just doesn't feel effective/useful enough to warrant a slot on my bar, especially when considering the long duration you have to stay in it make it worthwhile and within such a small confined space. I don't have a great deal to offer here, other than that more damage/healing probably isn't the solution. One idea might be to swing it as more of a utilitarian type skills that also provides some mild damage/healing. Allow the movespeed bonus to remain in effect for 2-3s after leaving the area and/or allow it to be castable while mounted- offering a self-only alternative to running Charging/Retreating Maneuvers. I can't speak for Twisting Path so feedback on this would be welcome from other sources.
• Agony & Morphs Still largely useless. The same can be said for Rune Prison/Petrify. In PvE anything you can CC you don't need to, anything you'd want to CC is immune. In PvP break free creates its own issues. Could I suggest that long term this skill (and if I can be so bold as to speak for Sorcs/DKs) Rune Prison/Petrify all be re-designed to brand new skills with their own unique effects? I have many more involved ideas, but don't want to bog the post down with them. Please let me know if you're curious.
• Medium armor feels too strong- particularly for certain melee damage builds like Wrecking Blow DKs. Perhaps it needs it's day in the sun after being weak for so long, but the amount of armor it provides, combined with the stamina regen and other passives seems like there's little downside. It would be interesting to see the amount of armor provided be reduced from 75% of what heavy gets, to 60%, leaving everything else the same. Eventually. Again, let 'em have their day in the sun =D

In any case, this is just my perspective. No spreadsheets or secret nightblade councils were visited as a part of this post.

Scamandros

I've played with twisting path pre patch and now. Despite the buff to the base skill damage, and the additional buff to twisting paths morphed damage it still feels a little underwhelming. The tooltip for it reads wrong saying it ticks every one second, in fact it ticks every 0.5 seconds as the unmorphed version does. I'm undecided as to whether I will continue using it on my aoe bar, probably with a bit more spell crit and other passives from CS I will really like it again.
Also the extra ticks + dropping a veil while wearing valkyn skoria is like its armageddon, meteors everywhere!

Still like it on my tank build because of its nice large conal range. Magicka skill thats good at grabbing everythings attenton to me.

Funnel heath isn't too bad right now. It doesn't do as much damage as it did in 1.5 after scaling, but its not too far behind. And the healing of it was increased so less damage, same survivability. Dirt cheap too which is always nice. I of course would like it to do more damage again, but can see how any further buffs to it could result in it becoming OP.

Agony is so bad Zos didn't know what to do with it for 1.6 and basically left as it. A cast time for a single target CC that breaks on damage dealt. There are just so many options that are better then this.

Grim focus I find awkward to incorporate into my rotation. First with the buff apparently disappearing when you summon the bow, at times it can feel like it would be more beneficial to just not activate it and keep the +8% damage. Don't get me wrong, it hits hard. I got the bow to crit around 12k damage last night, however activating the skill, or the animation itself, feels clunky. Theres usually a large delay before it actually goes off, sometimes it doesnt go off at all and I continue with the rest of my rotation instead.


Would be interested to get some opinions on NB healing now. Been trying out a set with the other morph of soul tether and its not terrible

ScruffyWhiskers

Not to beat a dead guar too much but magicka melee NB's need a replacement for Ambush. Lotus Fan doesn't cut it.

Zershar_Vemod

ScruffyWhiskers wrote: »

Not to beat a dead guar too much but magicka melee NB's need a replacement for Ambush. Lotus Fan doesn't cut it.

Agreed.

Ambush used to do damage at least, Lotus is only good for teleport..