A Proposal for NB Cloak "Fix"

Heindrich

Background
I've been solo ganking on my Stam DK recently and trying to use Invisibility potion (stealth + movement speed) to escape reprisal after making my attacks. After getting caught so often I couldn't help but think "man this would be so much easier on my NB", because when my DK gets pulled out of stealth, she cannot drink another pot until the cooldown is over, and of course she has no escape skills at all, whereas my NB can just recloak.

In fact I do usually use my Magicka N.Blade often to visit trophy vaults in IC because he can literally sneak past entire districts in perma-cloak mode and pick and choose fights at will, easily escaping when he bites off more than he can chew.

On my main PvP character (Sorc) it is frustrating the number of times I've run into NBs who just cloak away after failing to kill me with an opening burst. Increasingly I even come across NBs that just like to Mark me from stealth, and never actually attack when I get off my horse to defend myself. It's getting absurd and it just seems wrong...Ever since Detection Pots got nerfed in IC release, there is simply no reliable counter to NB cloaking.

Proposal
Marginally reduce cloak duration (to around 2.5s at max level). However make it impossible to bring a NB out of cloak with AoE, dots or gap closers. Detection Potions should work against cloak for the entire duration of the potion (or at least 30s) but not reveal the Nightblade to anyone other than the player using the potion. (If this is impossible to implement and detection potions continue to reveal NBs to everyone around him, then the duration and detection radius should remain short and small).

Cloak should have spam cost increase like Streak.

Why
Cloak should remain viable as a reliable skill to enable a NB to strike from stealth and escape retribution. It should not give a NB near impunity on the battlefield and allow MagBlades to fight almost entirely from stealth and literally permacloak.

Before the Detection Pot nerf, detection pots were a hard counter to stealth builds, which went too far in favour of counter-stealth. I used to specificially pot a detection potion and streak after cloaking NBs on my Sorc to hunt them down since they were the squishiest targets once they lose their main defensive skill. I want to avoid situations like that where a NB simply cannot escape from a group as soon as one individual pops a detection pot. At the same time the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction since then.

An escalating cost of cloaking (and reduced duration) will prevent permacloaking, but still allow NBs to escape immediate danger if they have managed their resources well. The immunity to being brought out of stealth by AoE, caltrops, gap closers etc in fact will make cloak a more reliable escape, especially when heavily outnumbered, but it forces the NB to consider direction of escape, positioning etc (maybe he needs to find a corner to hide behind and recover Magicka before cloaking further into safety).

Players investing in detection pots should feel like they actually make a difference, ideally allowing specific "counter-stealth" players to hunt down enemy NBs, but not condemning the NB to getting zerged down by massed caltrops and Steel Tornado.

Anyway those are just my thoughts. I don't pretend to be a PvP expert or developer. I'm just bored cos the server is down

Feel free to discuss and/or disagree, though preferably cordially

AFrostWolf

Last I heard. Detect pots were getting buffed, then instead they got nerfed in IC. Anyone know why? NB tears?

Duukar

Because cloak is SOOO easy to break.. If you are even a marginally intelligent person you slot an aoe ability on your bar and POOF you just perma broke cloak.

Obviously you guys aren't fettered with any sort of intellect.

The grass is always greener man.

tennant94

Op you deserve a cost increase to your wrecking blow.

Heindrich

tennant94 wrote: »

Op you deserve a cost increase to your wrecking blow.

Duukar wrote: »

Because cloak is SOOO easy to break.. If you are even a marginally intelligent person you slot an aoe ability on your bar and POOF you just perma broke cloak.

Obviously you guys aren't fettered with any sort of intellect.

The grass is always greener man.

*sigh*

What was I thinking. A mature discussion on ESO forum, who am I kidding.

Forget it, you guys didn't even read what I wrote. If you did you'll see that:

1. I do have a NB. My reasoning for Cloak fix includes my personal use of cloak as well as trying to deal with enemies using it.
2. I said I've been ganking on my DK... who the fxxx ganks with Wrecking Blow Shows how much you know.

kadar

This horse has been beaten into undeath.

I agree detect pots need a buff.
I disagree that detect pots are ineffective in killing stealthers even in their current state.
I disagree that Cloak should have a 33% increase in cost because Bolt Escape.

ESO is literally dripping with things that can be used to nullify Cloak.

Use detect pot only when NB begins to run away or has less than 50% health.
Use BE/Steel Tornado/RML/Jabs/Burning Breath/ect. in the general direction of fleeing NB = free kill.
Use Mark.

Noobie

You can have our stealth, give us the DK's survivability, and sorcs teleport, with a splash of templar healing

Heindrich wrote: »

tennant94 wrote: »

Op you deserve a cost increase to your wrecking blow.

Duukar wrote: »

Because cloak is SOOO easy to break.. If you are even a marginally intelligent person you slot an aoe ability on your bar and POOF you just perma broke cloak.

Obviously you guys aren't fettered with any sort of intellect.

The grass is always greener man.

*sigh*

What was I thinking. A mature discussion on ESO forum, who am I kidding.

Forget it, you guys didn't even read what I wrote. If you did you'll see that:

1. I do have a NB. My reasoning for Cloak fix includes my personal use of cloak as well as trying to deal with enemies using it.
2. I said I've been ganking on my DK... who the fxxx ganks with Wrecking Blow Shows how much you know.

what you fail to realize is that cloak works fine for NB. i have been popped out of stealth by AoE's and nuked by a sorc overcharged light attack spell for over 14k health. which sounds more broken?

Lenikus

Cloak is only broken because it's not always doing the 'garanteed miss' to single target skill, but still, it's fine, actually, fixing it might as well make it too OP and people would scream "nerf nb" even higher.
As a nightblade, i say "Leave it as it is"

wayfarerx

Heindrich wrote: »

Cloak should have spam cost increase like Streak.

Stamblade says no. This one only gets a couple cloaks in a row as it is, find another way to nerf the perma-cloakers.

Heindrich

Noobie wrote: »

what you fail to realize is that cloak works fine for NB. i have been popped out of stealth by AoE's and nuked by a sorc overcharged light attack spell for over 14k health. which sounds more broken?

I am saying you shouldn't be blown out of stealth by generic AoE skills. It should be a conscious effort to catch a Cloaking NB, using detection potions or specific anti-stealth skills like Flare, Mage Light, Mark, etc...

kadar

As far as I know... a change has already been suggested by ZOS, to paraphrase:

Cloak is strong, but is has many counters, therefore we are looking at tweaks including disallowing or reducing Magicka Regeneration while invisible.

...too lazy to go find the quote...

redspecter23

Cloak is fine. Perma cloaking is slightly annoying. Running all the trash in IC into players then using cloak to dump aggro is slightly broken and extremely annoying. There are issues with invis but not all necessarily due to cloak. Some of it is just the mechanics. I'm sure cloak was given a 3sec (approx) time limit for a reason. To be able to completely avoid that short time duration restriction by just reupping cloak over and over feels a bit unintended. Why not just make the duration longer if near permanent invisibility was the intention? I can't help but think that the huge resource pools causing perma cloak to be a thing are the issue more than a few seconds of invis here or there.

phbell

I have always felt that invisibility was an unfair advantage and I have a NB alt. I do not think that any class should have such a skill, nor do I believe that we should have invisibility potions.

AlnilamE

I want to meet one of these fabled nightblades that can fight in perma-stealth.

I pretty much gave up on using cloak in battle as I just get pulled out of it or someone hits me with focused aim or whatever.

I agree that it's useful for running past mobs in IC, but against players that know what they are doing?

Xjcon

Time for a new FOTM. Which class is played the least?

wayfarerx

AlnilamE wrote: »

I want to meet one of these fabled nightblades that can fight in perma-stealth.

Indeed, maybe 1 out of 10 times I actually get away by cloaking. The rest of the time it's AoE -> stun -> dead.

ThatNeonZebraAgain

The_Outsider wrote: »

This horse has been beaten into undeath.

I agree detect pots need a buff.
I disagree that detect pots are ineffective in killing stealthers even in their current state.
I disagree that Cloak should have a 33% increase in cost because Bolt Escape.

ESO is literally dripping with things that can be used to nullify Cloak.

Use detect pot only when NB begins to run away or has less than 50% health.
Use BE/Steel Tornado/RML/Jabs/Burning Breath/ect. in the general direction of fleeing NB = free kill.
Use Mark.

OR, whenever you see a NB cloak, simply block! Wow, see how easy that is? You can easily negate any bonus NBs get by attacking from stealth if you just block as soon as they go invisible.

Jarradhx

As is cloak is actually a well balanced skill. Multiple skills can bring a NB out of cloak. IE Gap closers/Aoe, Caltrops, etc. The skill already has a large cost per cast.

Sav72

Does perma cloak.......

Heal you?

Give you god like shields?

Reflects all incoming damage back to attackers?


No, it does not.

Please try again.

Heindrich

AlnilamE wrote: »

I want to meet one of these fabled nightblades that can fight in perma-stealth.

I pretty much gave up on using cloak in battle as I just get pulled out of it or someone hits me with focused aim or whatever.

I agree that it's useful for running past mobs in IC, but against players that know what they are doing?

Ok as an example... I have "dueled" against Magicka NBs on my Sorc who literally pop cloak the moment they are under any pressure. They barely even attack at times, literally just Lotus Fan, Fear, Conceal Weapon spam until I break cc and start hitting back, at which point they cloak away until fully healed up. The worst ones are the Swallow Soul snipers whose every second action seems to be cloak.

Yes I can use a detection pot, and it's what I used to do, but now they are visible briefly before the NB moves out of detection radius and I don't get any stam regen from the potion. Yes I can use Streak, but I'm left guessing which way they went and it's very expensive to try to catch a NB by streaking randomly.

I admit it's harder for a NB to sneak away from a larger group of people, which is why I said AoE and gap closers should not break cloak, but detection potions should be more effective at doing their job.

Artjuh90

why fix something that is working like intended. ah well your main is a sorc ofc you have to QQ about a class that is on the same level as you

Brrrofski

Fix implies something is broken.

Cloak is fine. Not broken, no need of a fix

Artjuh90

phbell wrote: »

I have always felt that invisibility was an unfair advantage and I have a NB alt. I do not think that any class should have such a skill, nor do I believe that we should have invisibility potions.

remove cloak = remove NB. it's as simple as that. this class is build around the stealth.
it's like saying lightning damage is to op remove it from the game -> bye sorc.
these kind of *** comments should just be ignored, especially since sorc have the least amount of reason to complain because as they are now they are on top in both PvE and PvP, i am ofc talking about magicka sorc. Stam sorc is a different issue but not the place in this thread.
would you say if there was a pot to break shields? i would love to see the QQ threads if ZoS implemented that. just look howmutch QQ there was about shieldbreaker, and that was a whole weaponset which made your build more niche anti-sorc ss then anything else.
don't get me wrong i do prefer those invis/detect potions in the game but it's still a easy counter since potions aren't that usefull in game (healing potion). so just no against anything on cloak. a stam NB can cloak 2x without magicka regen in a row. with magicka regen 3x and this is with full magicka.

silky_soft

Heindrich wrote: »

On my main PvP character (Sorc) it is frustrating

Haha

IXxIronWolfxXI

Play a stam NB then tell me how you perma cloak.
If your going to give NB the streak treatment I dont want anyones skills or their grandma's pulling me out of cloak. Just detect pots and magelight. Heck why do people even bring up streak? Its still a great skill that stuns, breaks distance and does damage. If cloak did that fair enough, nothing stops you from streaking right?

IXxIronWolfxXI

AND YOUR MAIN IS A SORC!
Amalexia's Mercy, love of the 9 divines a sorc is crying about NBs! The BEST class to counter NB and you struggle! Heck you deserve a 3x cost increase to your streak.

EDIT: I'd like a overload nerf and shield cause they hurt and annoy me. *sarcasm*

Korah_Eaglecry

wayfarerx wrote: »

Heindrich wrote: »

Cloak should have spam cost increase like Streak.

Stamblade says no. This one only gets a couple cloaks in a row as it is, find another way to nerf the perma-cloakers.

Cloak doesnt teleport you anywhere and anyone with a spammable AOE is going to break them out of Cloak over and over again. Cloak only works on people not intelligent enough to slot abilities that will deter Cloak use.

themdogesbite

Honestly id rather just give sorcs back their non cost increase on streak instead and a slight alteration to the block nerf.

aLi3nZ

Don't agree. Night blades need cloak. They got their cost increase with dodge rolling. Detect pots and smarter play needed.

Ampnode

Hm... I never have a problem going against NBs who use cloak, but that's probably because I'm a mag DK who uses Inhale. From what I've come to learn, NBs need cloak. Every class has that defensive ability for survival. Sorcs have shields, templars have heals, DKs have battle roar passive(as crappy as it may be now), and NBs have cloak. Yeah, NBs still are the OP class even without their cloak, but you can't argue that they actually need the ability. Besides, it's the that defensive skill that's so easily countered. Yeah, you have shield breaker for sorcs and defile for templars, but a simple AoE/potion is a lot easier to use than those 2 counters.

mrowmrif2

See what happens when you try and make rational discussion on these forums heindrich?

Heres a solution... When thieves guild or brotherhood comes out, lets see a skill line that adds a magicka or stamina based invis skill (or both morphs!) that becomes available to all with a little effort to level the skill line? Or something like a ninja smokebomb that blocks line of sight/blinds targets within the aoe for a short time (can even be a new for of CC that could require a break)... Maybe something out of the Predator movies where you arent INVISIBLE but you become a sillohette that blends into the surroundings like a chameleon - so maybe it lasts longer but you can still sorta 'see' the person using it... Maybe we will see a shift in play styles as either everyone starts cloaking all over the place or... Dont bother because they dont prefer to be sneaky and know how to counter it.

As far as cloak, there is already radiant magelight and the stealth detection aoe from Support skill line - either of those as well as caltrops and many other aoes are a counter for such stealth tactics.